The Conservatives have made no secret of the party’s desire to roll back its European human rights obligations, with many in the party also advocating repealing the Human Rights Act and establishing a British Bill of Rights. As the party seeks to ‘win back’ jurisdiction over human rights cases, Saladin Meckled-Garcia finds the coalition government’s stance is nothing less than an attempt to flout the rule of law for political purposes.


The UK is signatory to European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and subject to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights in interpreting the Convention rights. When passed into law in 1998, the Human Rights Act incorporated the ECHR’s rights directly into UK law. Judges in the UK in precedent setting cases have decided, rightly, that they are bound by ECHR jurisprudence as a bottom limit, a ‘floor’, on what protections they should give domestically. But judges did not stop there. They also decided that they should not go too far beyond the Strasbourg court’s decision by giving more generous human rights protections at home, even where it might be warranted. They do, after all, come from a judicial tradition that works fundamentally on precedent.

At the same time, the right wing of the Conservative party and its own ministers (viz the ‘catgate’ incident with Theresa May at the Tory party conference) have been pressing for the leadership to come good with its pre-election and post-election promises on the Human Rights Act. The inability to freely deport people it deems undesirable when this would violate their human rights has become emblematic of the government’s dissatisfaction with its ECHR obligations. This and the scandalous level of media misrepresentation of the effects of the act, have added to pressure on the government to do something.

Credit: radiowood2000 (Creative Commons BY NC)


So what is the government to do? Here is where the ‘wriggling’ comes in. The idea that the government has been trying to sell its discontents on human rights is that somehow it can get some ‘wriggle-room’ for domestic judges and the government itself when it comes to Strasbourg judgements. Can the UK use its presidency of the Council of Europe (of which the Court is an organ) to obtain dispensation to interpret ECHR rights more in line with ‘domestic priorities’?



But this seems somewhat misguided (for more detailed analysis see the UCL Institute for Human Rights submission to the Commission). First of all, the principles that people like Dominic Grieve (Attorney General), Kenneth Clarke, and Lord Howard have been appealing to as potential sources of wriggle room are nothing of the sort. For example, the margin of appreciation is a principle that makes allowances for states’ specific domestic circumstances when applying and enforcing a particular right. The test is whether there are, in fact, sufficient divergences throughout Council of Europe states on how a particular element of a right is understood to warrant treating that question as moot. Significant divergence, say, on whether abortion is a right or even permissible, means in the eyes of the court that different states are given a wide margin with regard to how they treat this practice. Deporting people deemed undesirable by the government irrespective of their family ties, on the other hand, would not get a wide margin because there is consensus on the relevant element of privacy and family life that is protected.

Joining the ranks of states trying to restrict the reach of the court, and those ranks include a number of serial-violating states, misconstrues clear principles of international law. In fact it is an attempt to usurp such principles for political purposes that goes against a fundamental principle applied domestically and inherent to the unwritten UK constitution: the rule of law. The rule of law is not the principle that judges are right when they please us and jurisprudence is binding when it is politically acceptable. It is the principle that judicial decisions and principles apply irrespective of political expediency. That principle preserves the separation of powers, and makes politicians, including the executive, subject to the law like everyone else. Meddling with ECHR judicial practice without a clear legal principle behind you is therefore meddling with the rule of law. In this case, the rule of law for the whole Council of Europe, for the sake of political expediency back home.



Please read our comments policy before posting.

This article first appeared on the UCL Institute for Human Rights’ blog: The Human Rights View.


About the author

Saladin Meckled-GarciaUCL
Dr Saladin Meckled-Garcia is Director of the UCL Institute for Human Rights (on twitter @humanrightsUCL) and Lecturer in Human Rights and Political Theory. His research focuses on the ethical foundations of human rights, and on theories of international justice. He has been a Rubin Senior Research Fellow in Human Rights, a Junior Research Fellow (Birmingham, Philosophy), and a Special Fellow in Philosophy (UCL, Philosophy dept.) He has been on the editorial board of Imprints, Journal of Egalitarian Theory and Policy, an associate editor for ResPublica, and a referee for a variety of journals.



Print Friendly, PDF & Email