The UK's engagement with the legal protection of human rights at a European level has been, at varying stages, pioneering, sceptical and antagonistic. The UK government, media and public opinion have all at times expressed concerns about the growing influence of European human rights law, particularly in the controversial contexts of prisoner voting and deportation of suspected terrorists as well as in the context of British military action abroad. British politicians and judges have also, however, played important roles in drafting, implementing and interpreting the European Convention on Human Rights. Its incorporation into domestic law in the Human Rights Act 1998 intensified the ongoing debate about the UK's international and regional human rights commitments. Furthermore, the increasing importance of the European Union in the human rights sphere has added another layer to the relationship and highlights the complex relationship(s) between the UK government, the Westminster Parliament and judges in the UK, Strasbourg and Luxembourg. The book analyses the topical and contentious issue of the relationship between the UK and the European systems for the protection of human rights (ECHR and EU) from doctrinal, contextual and comparative perspectives and explores factors that influence the relationship of the UK and European human rights.

Forde examines the effectiveness of the human rights system of the Council of Europe (CoE) in conflict-affected regions and advances a novel approach to understanding how the European Convention on Human Rights can better serve the 10+ million rights-holders living in so-called human rights 'grey zones'. Building on the premise that nowhere in Europe should be deprived of access to Europe's human rights architecture, Forde argues that areas of conflict give rise to a collective public order imperative on Member States to seek maximal effectiveness of the CoE human rights system. Despite Kosovo's sui generis status, much of the CoE's experience of engagement with Kosovo could inspire more proactive efforts in relation to other areas of conflict. This book advocates a judicious engagement of the CoE's unique assets and acquis in affected regions based on the collective responsibility of Member States and the normative will of the Secretary General.

This book looks at how the European Court of Human Rights has addressed the question of immigration. As immigration in Europe has increased, so has its criminalisation. This is a multi-faceted phenomenon, with criminal justice and harsh use of immigration measures becoming more and more entwined. This book asks: how has the European Court of Human Rights responded? Drawing on case law from across the spectrum of rights, it will show how effective it has been in countering detention and deportation, if at all. This makes an original contribution to growing focus on 'crimmigration'.

The European system of human rights protection faces institutional and political pressures which threaten its very survival. These institional pressures stem from the backlog of applications before the European Court of Human Rights, the large number of its judgments that remain unimplemented, and the political pressures that arise from sustained attacks on the Court's legitimacy and authority, notably from politicians and jurists in the United Kingdom. This book addresses the theme which lies at the heart of these pressures: the role of national parliaments in the implementation of judgments of the Court. It combines theoretical and empirical insights into the role of parliaments in securing domestic compliance with the Court's decisions, and provides detailed investigation of five European states with differing records of human rights compliance and parliamentary mobilisation: Ukraine, Romania, the United Kingdom, Germany, and the Netherlands. How far are parliaments engaged in implementation, and how far should they be? Do parliaments advance or hinder human rights compliance? Is it ever justifiable for parliaments to defy judgments of the Court? And how significant is the role played by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe? Drawing on the fields of international law, international relations, political science, and political philosophy, the book argues that adverse human rights judgments not only confer obligations on parliamentarians but also create opportunities for them to develop influential interpretations of human rights and enhance their own democratic legitimacy. It makes an authoritative contribution to debate about the future of the European and other supranational human rights mechanisms and the broader relationship between democracy, human rights, and legitimate authority.

Offers a new understanding of the relationships between litigation strategies, growing private funding and European human rights justice.

Over the past two decades, there has been increasing recognition of the ways in which disabled children and adults have been denied human and civil rights that others take for granted. In the year 2000, the Human Rights Act 1998 came into force in the United Kingdom. This book reviews the implications of the Act for disabled people. The book provides a clear and accessible account of the potential of the Human Rights Act to make a positive difference in relation to issues that have been identified through research, policy development and political debate as significant in the lives of disabled people.

How does the UK Supreme Court approach human rights law? This book provides the first comprehensive overview of human rights in the highest UK court, criticizing the failure of UK judges to develop the common law in sympathy with human rights.

Public law scholarship in the UK is fracturing. Based on the perception that feminist scholarship can provide public lawyers with the critical tools and insights, this collection begins a dialogue between public law and feminism by offering a range of perspectives on contemporary public law themes and topics.

This collection sets about untangling some of the knotty issues in the underexplored relationship between human rights and the media. We investigate how complex debates in political, judicial, academic and public life on the role and value of human rights are represented in the media, particularly, in print journalism. To focus the discussion, we concentrate on media representation of the controversial proposals in the United Kingdom to repeal the Human Rights Act 1998 and to replace it with a British Bill of Rights. The collection is underpinned by the observation that views on human rights and on the proposals to repeal and replace are polarised. On the one hand, human rights are presented as threatening and, therefore, utterly denigrated; on the other hand, human rights are idolised, and, therefore, uncritically celebrated. This is the ‘fear and fetish’ in our title. The media plays a decisive role in constructing this polarity through its representation of political and ideological viewpoints. In order to get to grips with the fear, the fetish and this complex interrelationship, the collection tackles key contemporary themes, amongst them: the proposed British Bill of Rights, Brexit, prisoner-voting, the demonisation of immigrants, press freedom, tabloid misreporting, trial by media and Magna Carta. The collection explores media representation, investigates media polarity and critiques the media’s role.

Through redrafting the judgments of the ECHR, Diversity and European Human Rights demonstrates how the court could improve the mainstreaming of diversity in its judgments. Eighteen judgments are considered and rewritten to reflect the concerns of women, children, LGB persons, ethnic and religious minorities, and persons with disabilities in turn. Each redrafted judgment is accompanied by a paper outlining the theoretical concepts and frameworks that guided the approaches of the authors and explaining how each amendment to the original text is an improvement. Simultaneously, the authors demonstrate how difficult it can be to translate ideas into judgments, whilst also providing examples of what those ideas would look like in judicial language. By rewriting actual judicial decisions in a wide range of topics this book offers a broad overview of diversity issues in the jurisprudence of the ECHR and aims to bridge the gap between academic analysis and judicial practice.