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1.1.1 Contents
1 The book contains 15 chapters including this introduction.
2 Chapter 2 provides an overview of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (1950), commonly referred to as the European Convention on Human Rights, and for convenience referred to hereafter simply as ‘the Convention’ or ‘the ECnHR’, depending on the context.
3 Chapter 3 provides an equivalent overview of the Human Rights Act 1998, and may be referred to as ‘the HRA’.
4 Chapters 4–12 address either specific articles of the Convention as in chapters 4, 5, 7, 9, 10 and 12, or themes that involve other substantive articles but may tend to have wider scope such as chapters 6 and 11.
5 The final three chapters address human property rights in chapter 13; themes, issues and the future in chapter 14; and global and non-European regional rights and regimes in the final chapter.
6 In the Key Facts sections of the book, the full case names are usually given so that it will be easy to access electronic databases to read the original law reports.
7 In the Key Cases sections, full citations are also provided.
8 It is important to read this chapter first (or be aware of its contents) as it contains information indicating a little historical and theoretical background but also provides a table of acronyms, a glossary of words and phrases, and a timeline.
1.1.2 What are human rights?
1 There are many theories and ideas as to what is meant by human rights, and for English law they are a development of what traditionally were called civil liberties, which are founded on the wider and less concrete bases of the rule of law, the doctrine of separation of powers, equity and other principles.
2 Modern parliamentary democracy started to grow out of the English Civil War in the 1640s and later through the Bill of Rights (1689), by which the protestant monarchs William and Mary were invited to take the Crown on condition that they accepted reduced royal powers and increased parliamentary government.
3 In the following century, the growth of natural or civil rights was strongly advanced by the American War of Independence from Britain in the 1770s and the French Revolution in the 1790s.
4 English common law over the centuries developed laws that provided protection for ordinary people, such as jury trial and habeas corpus, equitable remedies and, in the latter part of the twentieth century, judicial review.
5 During the Second World War, horrendous atrocities were committed and, in the aftermath, European states were persuaded to sign up to a new set of rules with the drafting of the Convention, so modern human rights began, initially very slowly, in 1950; the ECnHR was heavily influenced by the UN Declaration of Human Rights (1948).
6 Since the beginning of the twenty-first century with the introduction of a revitalised European Court of Human Rights to replace the previous Commission and Court, and with the expansion of membership of the Council of Europe following the end of the Cold War in 1989, growth has been exponential, powered in the UK by the HRA.
7 Examination of the substantive articles shows that the main focus of the Convention is on individual civil and political rights, with some more limited social and property rights, rather than wider collective rights, perhaps better described as ‘third-world aspirations’ such as the right to self-determination or economic development.
1.1.3 Characteristics of human rights
1 Western ideas of human rights are overwhelmingly based on the idea of universalism, so they are:
rights available everywhere;
rights simply by virtue of being human;
inalienable rights and so cannot be taken or given away (e.g. you cannot agree to become a slave);
egalitarian, meaning the same for everyone on the planet.
2 They may exist as:
a) natural rights not based or relying on legal systems but stemming from a higher mor...
