Tag: Relationship Between European and National Law
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Anthony Bradley: A Review of Jack Straw’s Hamlyn Lectures: Aspects of Law Reform: An Insider’s Perspective
As the lecturer disarmingly tells us at the outset of the Hamlyn Lectures for 2012 Hamlyn Lectures for 2012, the illustrious procession of Hamlyn lecturers since 1949 (Lord Denning) through to 2011 (Jeremy Waldron) has ‘without exception’ comprised ‘lawyers distinguished by their practice, their academic study or both’. Jack Straw is an exception. Since an…
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Dorota Leczykiewicz: Melloni and the future of constitutional conflict in the EU
Constitutional conflict is a leitmotif of the relationship between EU law and national law. Courts of EU Member States are under a dual obligation of loyalty. On the one hand, they need to apply and respect their own laws, but on the other, they also need to ensure effectiveness of norms of the EU legal…
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Roger Masterman: The Mirror Crack’d
Until recently, the Ullah principle – that in giving effect to the Convention rights under the HRA the ‘duty of national courts is to keep pace with the Strasbourg jurisprudence as it evolves over time: no more, but certainly no less’ (at [20]) – was something of a mantra for certain members of the senior…
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David Feldman: The European Court of Human Rights and the UK – Why Should Strasbourg Decide On Our Human Rights?
The date set for publication of the report of the Commission on a Bill of Rights approaches. The Commission was established to consider whether the UK should have a Bill of Rights, and, if so, what it should contain and how it should relate to the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental…
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Tom Hickman: The Return of Abu Qatada (to the streets of London)
The Abu Qatada saga is proving to be a very expensive and very embarrassing headache for the British Government. Following his narrow victory in Strasbourg in January, in which he succeeded only under Article 6, many assumed that the Government would secure the necessary concessions from the Jordanian Government that would enable him to be…
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Helen Fenwick: What’s Wrong with s.2 of the Human Rights Act?
It’s rare for a section of an Act of Parliament to arouse as much ire as s2 does, or for it to be asked to play such divergent roles by various commentators. S2 HRA provides that a court or tribunal ‘determining a question that has arisen in connection with a Convention right must take into…
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Dorota Leczykiewicz: The ‘national identity clause’ in the EU Treaty: a blow to supremacy of Union law?
The provision generally referred to as ‘the national identity clause’ is located Article 4(2) of the Treaty on European Union (TEU). It says: The Union shall respect the equality of Member States before the Treaties as well as their national identities, inherent in their fundamental structures, political and constitutional, inclusive of regional and local self-government.…
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Cormac Mac Amhlaigh: W(h)ither Sovereignty?
Harbingers of the demise of sovereignty are not new. At least since Karl Marx prophesized the withering away of the state, the heralding of the end of sovereignty has been an almost recurrent theme in political theory. In recent times, however, these prophecies have become increasingly insistent and have, perhaps for the first time, emanated…
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Colm O’Cinneide: Prisoners Votes (Again) and the ‘Constitutional Illegitimacy’ of the ECHR
The relationship between the UK and the European Court of Human Rights is once again in the news. On the 22th May last, the Grand Chamber of the Strasbourg Court delivered its judgment in Scoppola v. Italy (No. 3), Application No. 126/05. This decision marks a potentially decisive moment in the long-running saga of prisoner…
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David Mead: The Right To Protest Contained By Strasbourg: An Analysis of Austin v. UK & The Constitutional Pluralist Issues it Throws Up
The last few days have proved to be eventful for anyone interested in free speech and protest. First, Cambridge PhD student Owen Holland was rusticated for seven terms for reading out a poem that disrupted a speech being given by universities minister, David Willetts. Had this fallen to the magistrates, under say s.5 of the…