The protection of human rights in domestic law: learning lessons from the European Court of Human Rights

Abstract

The Human Rights Act 1998 came into force in October 2000, its purpose to allow victims of alleged violations of rights contained in the European Convention on Human Rights (1950) to pursue a remedy in the domestic courts. Thus, central to the Act’s purpose is to enable the access of the rights and remedies already provided by the machinery of the European Convention, subject only to those provisions of the Act which seek to retain the principle of parliamentary sovereignty. The purpose of this article is to study the case law of the European Court of Human Rights in relation to cases brought against the United Kingdom in order to examine the United Kingdom’s record under the Convention and, hopefully, of identifying common themes of human rights violations for which the United Kingdom has consistently been held responsible, and for which they may remain vulnerable to challenge in the future. At this stage it will be submitted that the European Convention has exposed the limitations of human rights protection in domestic law, and that on many occasions both the courts and Parliament have failed to adopt the necessary jurisprudence of the European Court in their respective roles. Finally, in the light of that evidence the article will examine the provisions of the Human Rights Act 1998 in order to assess the likely impact of that Act on the protection of rights and liberties in the United Kingdom.