There is an ongoing debate about whether or not there should be a Bill of Rights for the United Kingdom. The Government is committed to considering the need for a Bill of Rights and other political parties have expressed interest in developing one. The Committee intends its report to contribute to this debate. They have considered evidence from a range of witnesses about whether there is a need for a Bill of Rights including: who the Bill of Rights should cover; what the Bill should include; whether it should incorporate social and economic rights; how a Bill of Rights would fit in with and affect the relationship between Parliament, the executive and the courts; whether the Bill should refer to responsibilities, and how Government should consult the public about a future Bill. In Annex 1 there is an outline of what a draft Bill might look like. It is intended that this practical document demonstrates the potential simplicity of a Bill of Rights. The Committee is of the view that the U

This report presents the Government's response to the Committee's 29th report (HL 165-I/HC 150-I, session 2007-08, ISBN 9780104013472). The Committee welcomes various aspects of the Government response but also has some substantive comments. It also notes that publication of the Government's Green Paper has been repeatedly delayed and recommends that it be published as soon as possible. The Government's reiteration of its commitment not to detract or resile from the rights in the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR); and its acknowledgement that there would be scope for including in a new constitutional document a range of rights and responsibilities which go beyond those in the ECHR, are welcomed. The Committee is concerned to detect some equivocation in the Government's view about the Human Rights Act, particularly following the interview given by the Secretary of State for Justice in the Daily Mail on 10 December 2008. It also remains unclear about the relationship between rights and responsibilities envisaged by the Government in a Bill of Rights. Finally, the Committee recommends that the Government should follow Australia's example and appoint an independent committee to conduct a national consultation on the whole range of options for a Bill of Rights for the UK, ahead of parliamentary consideration of the bill itself.

Incorporating HC 360-i and ii, session 2008-09

Fourteen individual state essays elucidate the complexitites of local and regional interests that shaped the debate over individual rights and the eventual adoption of the Bill of Rights.

A considered balance of depth, detail, context, and critique, Public Law Directions offers the most student-friendly guide to the subject; empowering students to evaluate the law, understand its practical application, and approach assessments with confidence.

The fundamental, inalienable rights and privileges set forth in the Bill of Rights represent the very foundations of American liberty. The Complete Bill of Rights is a documentary record of the process by which these rights and privileges were defined and recorded as law. Now in its second edition, The Complete Bill of Rights contains double the content featured in the first edition. This new edition includes all the background texts for the origins and debate of the ratification of the Bill of Rights and presents them clause by clause in a complete, accurate, and accessible format. Arranged in chronological order, the work presents each clause in its finished form, and traces its development from its proposal through drafting through adoption. Cogan presents every draft of the text and every documentary source, including state convention proposals, state, colonial, and English constitutional texts, sources in caselaw and treatises, and State and Colonial statutory and decisional law. He includes data from diaries and correspondence, pamphlets and newspapers, as well as the Congressional and State debates, including the correspondence of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and John Adams among many others who debated the issues that the Supreme Court considers law today. The book also contains each version of the drafts from the manuscript collections of the National Archives and Library of Congress. The result is the most detailed and useful record of the debate over the Bill of Rights available. This first new edition since 1997 substantially expands on the previous edition, providing the same invaluable texts for two fundamental protections of liberty found in the Constitution of 1789 (though not in the Bill of Rights): the protections under habeas corpus and the privileges and immunities clauses. Each chapter expands the background discussion of rights, and provides pertinent texts in contemporary legal dictionaries to meet the increasing interest of federal and state courts in additional sources for interpretation. The second edition also provides a chapter-by-chapter discussion of rights by treatise and abridgement writers in addition to Blackstone. Finally, all margin notes and footnotes in the dictionaries and treatises are included, so the reader has access to the totality of the original statues and case law upon which the drafters relied. The Complete Bill of Rights is the only comprehensive collection of texts essential to understanding the Bill of Rights. Organized in an accessible and practical manner, it is an invaluable tool for law students, judges, lawyers, and law clerks, as well as scholars of the law, history, and political science.

The first comprehensive account of civil liberties activism throughout twentieth-century Britain, focusing primarily on the National Council for Civil Liberties.

The essays in this volume provide insights into the rights thinking and consciousness at the core of American political culture.

The last decade has seen radical changes in the way we are governed. Reforms such as the Human Rights Act and devolution have led to the replacement of one constitutional order by another. This book is the first to describe and analyse Britain's new constitution, asking why it was that the old system, seemingly hallowed by time, came under challenge, and why it is being replaced. The Human Rights Act and the devolution legislation have the character of fundamental law. They in practice limit the rights of Westminster as a sovereign parliament, and establish a constitution which is quasi-federal in nature. The old constitution emphasised the sovereignty of Parliament. The new constitution, by contrast, emphasises the separation of powers, both territorially and at the centre of government. The aim of constitutional reformers has been to improve the quality of government. But the main weakness of the new constitution is that it does little to secure more popular involvement in politics. We are in the process of becoming a constitutional state, but not a popular constitutional state. The next phase of constitutional reform, therefore, is likely to involve the creation of new forms of democratic engagement, so that our constitutional forms come to be more congruent with the social and political forces of the age. The end-point of this piecemeal process might well be a fully codified or written constitution which declares that power stems not from the Queen-in Parliament, but, instead, as in so many constitutions, from `We, the People'. The old British constitution was analysed by Bagehot and Dicey. In this book Vernon Bogdanor charts the significance of what is coming to replace it. The expenses scandal shows up grave defects in the British constitution. Vernon Bogdanor shows how the constitution can be reformed and the political system opened up in`The New British Constitution'.