This essay can be helpful for your CIE A levels, AS level, exams or even first year law degree. All my essays have been marked by my lecturer and given good grades! This Human rights essay was awarded top in the class marks (English legal system)
The European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) was ratified by the UK in 1951. The Human
Rights Act (HRA) 1998 incorporated the Convention into domestic UK law only in October 2000.
Examples of the ECHR are: Art 3 Freedom from torture of inhuman or degrading treatment, Art
8 The right to respect one’s private life and Art 10 Freedom of expression.
Under s.2 of the HRA, any relevant Strasbourg jurisprudence is classed under persuasive
precedent in the UK judiciary. s.7 allows UK citizens to enforce their rights in the UK courts
without going to the court in Strasbourg. The convention is now applicable directly in UK courts.
Additionally, s.8 allows the UK courts to award remedies like giving damages for the breach of
convention rights.
s.3 states that in all UK courts, judges should interpret laws to not conflict with the ECHR. An
example of this is used is in Ghaidan v Godin Mendoza where the House of Lords encouraged
the courts to use s 3 to interpret statutes compatible with Article 14 of the ECHR. This granted
same-sex relationships same tenancy rights as heterosexual couples.
Under s 4, a UK court can declare a particular law made by Parliament to be incompatible with
the ECHR while in s.10, a Minister has the discretion to decide whether to amend the particular
law via a fast-track procedure. An example of incompatibility is in the case of Wilson v First
County Trust Ltd where the House of Lords declared that a provision of the Consumer Credit
Act 1974 violated the Convention. Some incompatibilities were remedied and others overturned.
s.6 states that a public authority includes central and local government, the police and the NHS.
It is unlawful for public authorities to act incompatibly with Convention Rights. There has been
debate as to whether the HRA allows individual citizens to enforce Convention rights on other
private bodies, known as the horizontal effect. The reference to primarily ‘public authorities’
establishes that citizens can rely on their convention rights against the state, known as the
vertical effect.
If a civil court failed to apply a Convention right in legal proceedings between private parties, it
would be a breach of the Human Rights Act. in Douglas v Hello! marriage photographs of two
Hollywood actors were published without consent by the magazine Hello! Even though the legal
proceedings were between private parties, the Convention was deemed relevant because of the
HRA. A private body, under s.6(3)(b), can be regarded as a form of public authority if it performs
‘functions of a public nature’. This is a hybrid public authority who will observe the Conservation
rights on functions which are of public nature. This is seen in YL v Birmingham City Council
where the issue was if ECHR applies to Southern Cross Healthcare since the government was
paying them to care for an elderly lady. The Court decided that just because a private company
receives money from the government, it does not make it a hybrid public authority.
For example, In Al-Skeini, the issue was if the Iraqi civilians, arrested and tortured by British
soldiers, had the protection of the HRA. The Iraqi prisoners were suing the British government
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