Full Description
By providing enforceable remedies for breaches of Convention Rights in domestic courts, and in allowing judges to scrutinise parliamentary legislation on human rights grounds, the United Kingdom's Human Rights Act 1998 marked a sea-change in the relationships between the individual and the state, and between the courts and the political branches of government, as they had been traditionally understood. Despite the undeniable practical importance of the Human Rights Act, widespread political and popular scepticism over the nature of rights adjudication and the relationship between human rights laws and-for instance-measures designed to combat terrorism and crime, has prevented the Human Rights Act from being seen as an established and essential part of our constitutional structures. This uncertainty has not however prevented the Human Rights Act from exerting significant constitutional influence within the United Kingdom, within the framework provided by the European Convention and European Court of Human Rights, and beyond. This edited collection of essays therefore seeks to chart the lasting constitutional impact of the Human Rights Act at a point when its political future is far from assured. To that end, chapters examine the relationships between the Human Rights Act and domestic constitutional doctrine, with the Convention's enforcement bodies at Strasbourg and with statutory bills of rights in other common law jurisdictions. Further, the collection goes on to examine the permanence of changes initiated in domestic legal reasoning and process-including to judicial technique and in advocacy-before finally turning to examine how the experience of the Human Rights Act might influence the future development of a Bill of Rights for the United Kingdom.
Contents
1: Roger Masterman and Ian Leigh: The United Kingdom's Human Rights Project in Constitutional and Comparative Perspective
Part I-The Human Rights Act in Constitutional Perspective
2: Gavin Phillipson: The Human Rights Act, Dialogue and Constitutional Principles
3: C.R.G. Murray: The Continuation of Politics, by other means: Judicial Dialogue under the Human Rights Act 1998
4: Aidan O'Neill QC: Back to the Future?: Judges, Politicians and the Constitution in the New Scotland
Part II-Domestic Protections within a European Framework
5: Roger Masterman: Deconstructing the Mirror Principle
6: Merris Amos: From monologue to dialogue-the relationship between UK courts and the European Court of Human Rights
Part III-A Permanent Revolution in Legal Reasoning?
7: Sir Jack Beatson: Human Rights and Judicial Technique
8: Sir Rabinder Singh: The Impact of the Human Rights Act on Advocacy
Part IV-The Human Rights Act on the International Plane
9: Sir Anthony Mason: Human Rights and Legislative Supremacy
10: Simon Evans and Julia Watson: Australian Bills of Rights and the "New Commonwealth Model of Constitutionalism"
11: Petra Butler: Cross fertilisation of constitutional ideas: The Relationship between the Human Rights Act 1998 and the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990
Part V-Amendment, Repeal or a Bill of Rights for the UK?
12: Alice Donald: A Bill of Rights for the UK? Lessons from Overseas
13: Helen Fenwick: Conservative Anti-HRA Rhetoric, the Bill of Rights "Solution" and the role of the Bill of Rights Commission
