Saving Human Rights in England
| DOI | 10.1177/203228441400500401 |
| Date | 01 December 2014 |
| Published date | 01 December 2014 |
| Author | Scott Crosby |
| Subject Matter | Editorial |
New Journal of Eu ropean Crimina l Law, Vol. 5, Issue 4, 2014 429
EDITORIAL
SAVING HUMAN RIGHTS IN ENGLAND
S C
It is now the o cial policy of the Conservative and Unionist Party in the United
Kingdom, which is the domina nt party in the current coalition government, to
withdraw the UK f rom the European Convention of Human Rights a nd Fundamental
Freedoms in order to protect the UK’s “distinctive constitutional arrangement s” which,
in the words of the Minister of Justice (Financial Times, 2October 2014), have been
“distorted” by t he “Strasbourg court ”.
Currently the UK is, as are all Convention States, bound by the judgments of the
Strasbourg court a nd must comply with any ruling against any UK law found
incompatible with the Convention. If it were other wise, the Convention would be
ine ective.
e complaint is, however, that Strasbourg binds, but t he Westmi nster Parliament
(Westminster) may not be bound because it enjoys unlimited sovereignty. is
doctrine says th at Westmins ter may not bind itself or its successors and no court may
annul an act of t he Westminster Pa rliament, even if such act be manifest ly wrong.
So repudiating the Convention is designe d to remove the constra ints imposed on
Westminster and the UK cou rts, remove the alleged distortion and res tore unlimited
parli amentar y sovereignt y. e UK constitution, which has t he feature, unique among
constitutions, of entrenching t he unlimited power of the state, is thus to prevail over
the Convention.
e Minister s eeks to re-assure the populace that human rig hts protection would
not be lessened because a bill of rig hts would be adopted in place of t he Convention,
which would be applied by the cour ts.
is is dishonest. Given the doct rine of unlimited power which the Mi nister seeks
to protect, any bill of rights a s may be adopted by the current parliament could be
repealed under any successor parliament. Furt hermore, no court would have the
power to annul any act of state even if it in fringed the bill of rights , because the courts
may not interfere with the sovereignty of Westminster.
So the fundamental and enforceable rights enjoyed under the Convention would
be replaced by ultimately unenforceable rig hts under a UK bill of rights that would
not have the status of funda mental law because under the doctrine of parliamentary
sovereignty no laws are fundamenta l.
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