Law
Human Rights in UK
Human rights in the UK refer to the fundamental freedoms and protections afforded to individuals under UK law and international human rights conventions. These rights encompass civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights, and are upheld and enforced by various legal mechanisms and institutions. The UK has incorporated human rights principles into its legal framework through legislation such as the Human Rights Act 1998.
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10 Key excerpts on "Human Rights in UK"
eBook - PDFHuman Rights Brought Home
Socio-Legal Perspectives of Human Rights in the National Context
- Simon Halliday, Patrick Schmidt, Simon Halliday, Patrick Schmidt(Authors)
- 2004(Publication Date)
- Hart Publishing(Publisher)
Further, though human rights earlier had largely been the province of international lawyers, in the twenty-first century it has become an instrument of domestic law across the common law and civil law world alike. Although human rights retains considerable vitality as an aspect of international law, with recent applications from Rwanda to Yugoslavia, this transformation has brought the concept more completely within complex and advanced legal systems, some of which have recognised some notions of civil and political rights for centuries. In addition to its history in international law and politics, its influence on popular consciousness, and its place in a number of intellectual disci-plines, then, ‘human rights’ has now become a concept of domestic law and may be explored and analysed within this framework. This has had a clear impact on legal research. Even before the full blossoming of domes-tic human rights adjudication in the UK, we witnessed the start of the now-explosion of legal scholarship exploring the implications of human rights for various areas of domestic law. As parties have raised human rights claims and judges have begun to develop a domestic human rights jurisprudence, the significance of human rights to domestic law and pol-icy making has been all the more obvious. However, just as the reception of international human rights norms into domestic law raises a host of doctrinal questions, so too it raises unavoidable socio-legal questions in the national context. In the wake of such a seismic shift in the legal and constitutional landscape, a full and pressing socio-legal research agenda emerges. However, socio-legal work on human rights in the national con-text has failed to match the pace and enthusiasm of doctrinal work, par-ticularly in terms of the empirical socio-legal evidence necessary to assess the claims made for human rights as legal practice.
- Catherine Barnard(Author)
- 2008(Publication Date)
- Hart Publishing(Publisher)
Indeed, in a predecessor of mine as Lord Chancellor, Lord Jowitt—himself a lawyer, a politician and a judge—this tension was embodied. As a lawyer, he disliked some of the imprecise drafting of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR), as a judge was concerned about the application of * Mackenzie Stuart Lecture, University of Cambridge, 25 October 2007. 450 JACK STRAW such a ‘half baked scheme’, 1 but, as a politician, decided that it was clearly in the national interest to agree. Behind this example lies a point of substance. The history of rights has been typified by the search for a balance of principle and practicality: what they represent and how they can be effectively applied under the law. Human rights are our birthright as human beings: they are not the gift of governments but part of our common humanity. However, they have to be seen in the context of their time. When it was adopted and proclaimed at the UN on 10 December 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was not intended to create legal rights—it was aspirational, offering a normative counterpoint to the evil that had so recently gone before. It was the expression of a global desire and drive to establish common standards applicable to all humankind. The European Convention of Human Rights was borne from this, taking this non-enforceable Universal Declaration as its base but developing the prin-ciples which underpinned it through the protection and framework of the law and with a means, ultimately, to enforce that law through the Court. What I want to do in this lecture is look at how our sense of rights and obligations has changed over the last half century, and suggest that the formulations of human rights from the 1950s are robust and timeless, but that they need to be further adapted to take account of major changes in the UK, in Europe, and in the world over the past 20 years.
eBook - PDF- David Hayton(Author)
- 2000(Publication Date)
- Hart Publishing(Publisher)
The United Kingdom remains some distance from that outcome. Of the three cardinal principles of liberal constitutionalism only one has been legally recognised, and even that only in a partial manner. There remains no sign at all of a written constitution. The separation of powers (in the Madisonian sense of there being three powers, kept separate from one another in terms 20 Human Rights Act, s. 4. 21 The Government introduced its Freedom of Information Bill into the House of Commons on 18 November 1999. Its earlier proposals were set out in the White Paper, Your Right to Know (Cm 3818, December 1997). Constitutional and Human Rights Law 61 both of function and personnel, with each having the constitutional responsi-bility of checking and balancing the other two) remains as far away from UK constitutionalism as ever. Only the protection of civil rights—the third and final element of liberal constitutionalism—is with us, and even that only in a limited way. It is to this, the most dramatic of the Blair Government's reforms from the legal perspective, that we now turn. The Human Rights Act 1998 Two assumptions underpinned the push for incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights into UK domestic law. These were, firstly that civil liberties and human rights protection had been seriously eroded in the United Kingdom during the 1980s and 1990s and secondly, that the European Convention on Human Rights and in particular the case law of the European Court of Human Rights offered a better guarantor of basic freedoms in the United Kingdom than the then prevailing status quo. We shall briefly consider the validity of these two assumptions before analysing the construction of the Human Rights Act 1998 and what its enactment suggests for the future. The Supposed Erosion of Civil Liberties It is a commonly held view that the 1980s was a time when unparalleled dam-age was done to civil liberties protection in UK law.
eBook - PDFDiscourse Theory in European Politics
Identity, Policy and Governance
- D. Howarth, J. Torfing, D. Howarth, J. Torfing(Authors)
- 2004(Publication Date)
- Palgrave Macmillan(Publisher)
6 The Human Rights Act: Politics, Power, and the Law Anthony M. Clohesy Introduction In 1998, the Human Rights Act (HRA),l which incorporated the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) into British law, was passed by the United Kingdom Parliament, giving British citizens a form of protection taken for granted in virtually every Commonwealth country and Western democracy (Dyer, The Guardian, 12 November 1998). The Act, which some have argued is the most important constitutional development in Britain since the signing of the Magna Carta, is intended to deliver 'a modern reconciliation to the inevitable tension between the democratic right of the majority to exercise political power and the democratic need of individuals and minorities to have their human rights secured' (Klug, Singh, and Hunt, 1997, p. 2). Anyone living within the jurisdiction of the UK, regardless of citizenship or nationality, can claim the protection of the convention. If one is a victim, in other words, if one's rights have been or would be violated by a public authority, one can bring proceedings in any court or tribunal in the land. Provided someone can show that they are 'personally affected' by the decisions or actions of a public body they can bring a case for judicial review on convention grounds alone (Klug, Singh, and Hunt, 1997, p. 3). At first sight, this legislation represents something of an oddity in British politics in that it implies a significant shift of power from the executive. 2 Although, at the time of writing, the New Labour Government is keen to present itself as a modernizing force, committed to democratizing the British state, the evidence so far suggests that behind this apparent reformist zeal lurks a deeply conservative and centralizing instinct. Witness, for example, the initiatives of devolution, reform of the House of Lords, and the Freedom of Information Act.
eBook - PDF- Roger Trigg(Author)
- 2008(Publication Date)
- Wiley-Blackwell(Publisher)
Often the rights are underspecified. The United States has always allowed judges to veto legislation on the ground that it trans-gresses basic constitutional rights. In the United Kingdom the doctrine was always that Parliament was sovereign, but in recent years judicial review of legislation has become increasingly common. This follows the Human Rights Act of 1998, which brings the European Convention on Human Rights into the domestic law of the United Kingdom. Even the decisions of Parliament can be scrutinized in the courts to ensure that they meet certain standards derived from human rights. Canada had previously taken a similar path, by subjecting its laws to requirements about human rights, under the Canada Act and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms of 1982. However, while legislation can grant certain civil rights in a particular country, the idea of human rights is much harder to make explicit. Simply because they often appear as standards legislation has to meet, rather than being codified in legislation, rights are by their very nature hard to pin down in practical terms. Even if one has a list, and a government prepared to implement it, this is still a long way from having clear and enforceable legislation. As Russell Hittinger points out, ‘One needn’t be a sceptic about natural or human rights to understand the problem posed by under-specified rights, which so often find expression in bills and charters of rights.’ 1 His point is that one still needs a specific legal procedure to put into practice the ideals promulgated. Without it, one is in a world of unfocused moral outrage, because, as Hittinger says, ‘people believe they have a right prior to anyone knowing precisely what it is’. Yet we then have a situation in which moral claims can be made, and indignation expressed, without any clear responsibility for action by anyone. This is bound to undermine morality. As Hittinger says, rights have to be given a proper specification.
eBook - PDFBalancing Liberty and Security
Human Rights, Human Wrongs
- Kate Moss(Author)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- Palgrave Macmillan(Publisher)
Furthermore the influential author, Dicey (1915), argued that Judges through the development of common law principles, protected indi- vidual liberty. Rights in the UK were defined as ‘residual’, that is to say, individuals were free to do what they wanted as long as they did not break the law. This can be contrasted with the legal position where a written Bill of Rights forms part of the constitution and where rights might be described as ‘positive’. Politicians in the UK began to recognise the need for a written form of a Bill of Rights to be codified. Given that the Executive increasingly dominates Parliament the potential for Governments to ignore basic rights for political imperatives is very real. Furthermore confidence in the ability of the Judiciary to safeguard rights through the common law had become increasingly undermined. In ‘Rights Brought Home: The Human Rights Bill’ (Cmnd 3782) the Labour Government outlined the case for incorporation. 6 The European Convention on Human Rights was formulated by the Council of Europe and came into effect in 1953. The UK was a signatory to the Convention and had been instrumental in drafting the document, but it did not form part of domestic law until 1998. This was achieved by the Human Rights Act of that year. Until then rights in the UK were defined as ‘residual’ and the incorporation of the Convention has created positive rights rather than negative freedoms. Despite not forming part of domestic law the Convention was neverthe- less influential in the development of policy on human rights in the UK. It is also important to recognise that the courts used Convention Rights as an aid to interpretation where there was an ambiguity in legislation, 70 Balancing Liberty and Security the presumption being that Parliament enacted laws that were in con- formity with the Convention. The European Court of Human Rights The European Court of Human Rights sits on a permanent basis in Strasbourg.
eBook - PDFYour Rights
The Liberty Guide to Human Rights
- Megan Addis, Penelope Morrow(Authors)
- 2005(Publication Date)
- Pluto Press(Publisher)
James Welch 1 The Human Rights Act 1998: An Overview The preamble to the Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA) describes it as ‘an Act to give greater effect to rights and freedoms guaranteed under the European Convention on Human Rights’ (the Convention). To understand the HRA you need to know something about the history of the Convention. 1.1 THE EUROPEAN CONVENTION ON HUMAN RIGHTS The Convention was drafted after the Second World War. British lawyers and civil servants were heavily involved in its drafting. The United Kingdom (UK) signed up to the Convention in 1953 and was one of the first countries to do so. In all, 45 countries have now signed up to the Convention including most of the East European, former communist countries and several countries that were once part of the Soviet Union. The countries that have signed up to the Convention make up the Council of Europe. The Council of Europe is quite separate from the European Union. The Convention is divided into ‘articles’. Articles 2 to 14 set out the rights that are protected by the Convention. Over the years the Convention has been supplemented by a number of protocols that have been agreed by the Council of Europe. Some of the protocols just deal with procedural issues but some guarantee rights in addition to those included in the Convention. The UK has signed up to two of the protocols that guarantee additional rights (the First and Sixth Protocols) but not to the others (the Fourth, Seventh and Twelfth Protocols). The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) is the international court set up to interpret and apply the Convention. It is based in Strasbourg, France and is made up of judges nominated by each of the countries that are members of the Council of Europe. Since 1966 people have had the right to bring cases against the British Government in the ECHR. Over the years there have been many cases in which the ECHR has found that the UK has breached the Convention.
eBook - PDFThe New Law of Peaceful Protest
Rights and Regulation in the Human Rights Act Era
- David Mead(Author)
- 2010(Publication Date)
- Hart Publishing(Publisher)
7 See Sir John Laws, ‘Is the High Court the guardian of fundamental constitutional rights?’ [1993] PL 59. 8 R v Secretary of State for the Home Department ex parte McQuillan [1995] 4 All ER 400, 421 but compare K Ewing and C Gearty, The Struggle for Civil Liberties (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000) 403. It is true these tended to be what human rights theorists would call 1st generation or civil and political rights; the common law largely did not recognise socio-economic rights relating to (say) shelter or medical care—though see R v Secretary of State for Social Security ex parte JCWI [1996] 4 All ER 385 and R (Q) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2003] EWHC 195. Even Ewing and Gearty do not assert that judges failed to protect the catalogue of what we now call ‘(human) rights’; in that period, and throughout the century, they were very keen to protect certain sorts of rights—the property rights of employers, in the form of business, capital and profit, as against unionists or more traditional rights of liberty and the person such as fair trials, arbitrary arrest and torture. As such, judges were broadly sympathetic towards a liberal, individualistic political settlement rather than more social forms of engage-ment with ‘the public’. These latter Ewing and Geary categorise as ‘civil liberties’ or droits du citoyen —rights relat-ing to civic and democratic participation—after which ‘human rights’ can be contested and their scope and content decided. Civil liberties, so construed, would include voting rights, rights of expression, rights of collectiv-ity and association as well, of course, as the right to protest. 9 Hubbard v Pitt [1976] QB 142 (CA) 174 and above 4. 10 In order for any Treaty to take effect in domestic law—and thus to ‘bite’ on citizens (either empowering or constraining them)—there needs to be incorporation by Parliament.
eBook - PDFLegislating for Human Rights
The Parliamentary Debates on the Human Rights Bill
- Jonathan Cooper, Adrian Marshall-Williams, Jonathan Cooper, Adrian Marshall-Williams(Authors)
- 2000(Publication Date)
- Hart Publishing(Publisher)
It will strengthen representative and democratic government. It does so by enabling citizens to challenge more easily actions of the state if they fail to match the standards set by the European Convention. The Bill will thus create a new and better relationship between the Government and the people. Nothing in the Bill will take away the freedoms that our citizens already enjoy. However, those freedoms alone are not enough: they need to be complemented by positive rights that individuals can assert when they believe that they have been treated unfairly by the state, or that the state and its institutions have failed properly to protect them. The Bill will guarantee to everyone the means to enforce a set of basic civil and political rights, establishing a floor below which standards will not be allowed to fall. The Bill will achieve that by giving further effect in our domestic law to the fundamental rights and freedoms contained in the European Convention on Human Rights. The Convention is a treaty of the Council of Europe, now a body of some 40 countries. The Council was established at the end of the second world war as part of the allies’ programme to reconstruct civili-sation on the mainland of Europe. The United Kingdom was a prime mover in the Convention and played a major and dignified part in its drafting. One of its draftsmen, David Maxwell Fyfe, later became, as Lord Kilmuir, a distinguished Lord Chancellor in the Conservative Government from 1954 to 1962. The United Kingdom was also among the first countries to sign the Convention, which we did on the first available day. We were the first to ratify it, in March 1951. The United Kingdom’s international commitment to the Convention has continued ever since. In 1966, we accepted the right of individuals to bring cases against the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom has also set a [c. 770] good example in responding to any adverse findings of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
- Jean Allain, Siobhán Mullally, Jean Allain, Siobhán Mullally(Authors)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- Hart Publishing(Publisher)
Human Rights Law in the Republic of Ireland – 2008 Liam Thornton university of ulster There continued to be significant engagement with human rights issues by the Irish legislature, government and judiciary in 2008. The strengthening of the human rights of trafficking victims, lesbian, gay and bisexual men and women are worthy points of note. This must be contrasted with the continuing controversies in immigration law, the failure of the Irish Government to legislate so as to protect the rights of transgen-dered persons and the severe financial cutbacks imposed on the Equality Authority and the Irish Human Rights Commission. The number of cases argued before the Irish Courts on issues relating to human rights continues to rise. The judiciary have engaged in human rights disputes in a large number of areas, ranging from criminal law, family law, child law, immigration law, property law and mental health law. The incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms into Irish law has had no small part to play in this increase in human rights adjudication before the courts. As can be seen from the range of cases examined below, judicial engage-ment with other international human rights law instruments and treaties remains low. Nevertheless, in the area of child law at any rate, the judiciary seems more prepared to at least make reference to international legal instruments in coming to decisions, even if domestic or European human rights law can solve the issue at hand. It remains to be seen whether in future years, judicial reference to unincorporated international human rights treaties will expand. Criminal Justice Criminal Justice (Human Trafficking) Act 2008 The Criminal Law (Human Trafficking) Act 2008, which came into force in May 2008, made the crime of trafficking a specific offence within Irish law. The 2008 Act changed little from the Criminal Justice (Human Trafficking) Bill 2007, which was discussed in last year’s Report.
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