John Cooper & Chris Warburton reflect on the future of the Human Rights Act
Ten years after it came into force, the Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA) remains one of the most divisive pieces of legislation on the statute book. Negative perceptions of the Act and its effects are played out daily in large parts of the media. “It has undoubtedly”, said Baroness Hale speaking earlier this year, “enjoyed a very poor press”.
At first sight this is surprising. The HRA was enacted with cross-party support. It incorporated into domestic law an international treaty—the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR)—to which the UK had already been a signatory for almost half a century. And it allowed UK residents to enforce this law in their own courts instead of having to travel to Strasbourg to seek justice in the European Court of Human Rights.
Described in these terms, the HRA ought to have been uncontroversial. And indeed to its supporters the merits of the Act are usually self-evident. Yet critics frequently regard it as an alien intrusion into the realm of
