Overview: Human Rights Law

Abstract

The Supreme Court handed down 15 decisions in human rights related cases in the 2010–11 legal year, of which 12 involved rights guaranteed by the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).1 In the matter of an application by Re McCaughey,2 the Court addressed the question of whether an inquest into a death occurring before the Human Rights Act 1998 came into force had to comply with the procedural obligations under Article 2 of the ECHR. The appellants were the next of kin of two persons that had been killed by the British Army in Northern Ireland in 1990. An inquest was conducted to determine whether the victims had been subject of a shoot to kill policy.3 The Court of Appeal of Northern Ireland found that there was no obligation for the inquest to comply with Article 2 of the ECHR because the deaths occurred before the entry into force of the Act. The Supreme Court allowed the appeal on the grounds that the decision of the European Court of Human Rights in Silih v Slovenia4 imposed a free-standing obligation to comply with the procedural requirements of Article 2, where a significant proportion of the inquiry took place after the entry into force of the ECHR.5 Although the Act did not retrospectively impose an obligation to conduct an inquest in relation to a death, where a state has made a decision to conduct such an inquest, it came under a new, free-standing obligation to ensure that the investigation satisfied the procedural requirements of Article 2 of the ECHR.6 Six of the appeals related to ECHR rights involved claims pertaining to the right to respect for private and family rights under Article 8 of the ECHR.7 In Principal Reporter v K,8 the Court held that the child hearing system in Scotland