Rehashing old ideas? A response to the Bill of Rights Commission’s proposals. As we recently posted, the UK Commission on a Bill of Rights has published its interim advice to Government on reform of the European Court of Human Rights. The Commission made recommendations to achieve the “effective functioning of the Court over the long term”, following which Joshua Rozenberg stated that “everybody now agrees on the need for fundamental reform. It has to happen. And it will.” But if there is such agreement, can the Commission’s recommendations produce any meaningful reform? Recommendation 1: Reducing the Court’s caseload by reinforcing the principle of subsidiarity The principle of subsidiarity means that Member States must bear the primary responsibility for securing the protection of the rights contained within the Convention to their citizens. It may well be that when the Commission refers to subsidiarity, it actually wants to review the ‘margin of appreciation’ which the Court affords to Member States.
Does this sound familiar? The two sound pretty similar. Confusing the protection of human rights in Europe – Strasbourg v Luxembourg? Part 1. | eutopialaw. Aidan O’Neill QC Journalists and politicians in the UK have often shown themselves to be ‘confused’ over the relationship between the EU law and the European Convention of Human Rights/Human Rights Act. This confusion has been particularly evident in punditry on cases raising the issue of possible deportation or expulsion from the UK of other EU nationals and prisoners’ voting rights.
In a series of posts EUtopia law looks at the relationship between the CJEU and ECtHR more generally. All the Member States of the European Union are also contracting States of the Council of Europe. This means that the States are subject, in matters of EU law, to the final jurisdiction of the Court of Justice of the European Union (“CJEU”) based in Luxembourg. In matters concerning fundamental rights, however, these same States are subject to the final jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights (“ECtHR”), based in Strasbourg. Of course EU law and fundamental rights readily overlap in many areas. Do we need a UK Bill of Rights? The UK Bill of Rights Commission has launched a public consultation on whether we need a Bill of Rights.
The consultation document is here and reproduced below. You have until 11 November 2011 to respond and you can do so via email or post. The document provides a useful and fairly noncontroversial summary of rights protections as they currently exist within the UK constitutional structure. It does not, however, provide any information at all about what a “bill of rights” might entail or how such instruments work in other countries: contrast the far more detailed (and very useful) document produced in 2010 by the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
The Bill of Rights Commission was established in March 2011 and is due to report by the end of 2012. It is composed of 9 people, mostly Queen’s Counsel and not all of whom are human rights experts. For detailed background, see my most recent post as well as this excellent post on the UK Constitutional Law Group blog. Related posts Like this: