Nicholas Dobson considers whether the interpretation of human rights has too often become counter-intuitive to many outside a patrician élite
- The correct test for a statutory ‘lawful excuse’ defence is where there is a material error of law apparent on the face of the case, or if the decision is one which no reasonable court, properly instructed as to the relevant law, could have reached on the facts found.
- Arms trade protestors had a lawful excuse under Articles 10 and 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights when they were charged with wilful obstruction of the highway on an approach road to an arms fair at the Excel Centre in East London.
Addressing the Congress of Europe in The Hague on 7 May 1948 (with the Holocaust and other horrors still devastatingly raw), Winston Churchill remarked ‘in this dark hour’ that: ‘In the centre of our movement stands the idea of a Charter of Human Rights, guarded by freedom and sustained by law.’ This became the European Convention on Human Rights (to which Britain was the first
