This is a fantastic resource that questions the extent to which Pressure Groups are more able to successfully defend civil rights and liberties in the UK than the Supreme Court.
The essay looks at issues with both such as the problems with Elitism with Pressure Groups as well as the issues with...
Evaluate the View that Pressure groups are better at defending rights than the Supreme
Court.
Paragraph 1
Pressure Groups defend rights through influencing policy formation through various means.
o For example, Liberty, which is a key group to the protection and upholding of civil
rights and liberties utilises a number of methods such as carrying out research and
investigations into rights abuses and publicising them through media campaigns.
o For instance in 2015, Liberty launched a campaign to ‘save the human rights act’ to
publicise and oppose the conservatives manifesto commitment to repeal the HRA.
For the time being it was clearly a success considering the HRA still remains in place.
o Other groups can also influence policy and protect rights through lobbying MPs and
through demonstrations to raise awareness and support for their cause.
However
Pressure Groups can easily be ignored because Parliament is the legislative making body and
so government have no obligation to listen and act on Pressure Group advice.
o For instance despite Liberties online petitions and campaigns against lockdown
restrictions in 2020 and 2021, the government had continued to impose such
restrictions on peoples freedoms in the name of public health
o Additionally, they are elitist and so smaller groups may be unable to significantly
influence policy and protect rights as well as these larger groups who are able to pay
for lobbyists or have insider status such as Liberty.
o For instance other groups that fight for rights such as Fathers4Justice, are an
outsider but popular group but have had to resort other means of raising awareness
such as their superhero campaigns, but have still nonetheless been very limited in
what they have been able to achieve.
o Therefore, their ability to protect rights through influencing policy is actually rather
limited
Therefore, SC is more effective in defending rights since they can influence policy through
using the Human rights Act, and Judicial Review to offer declarations of incompatibility
where they feel that legislation has breached the ECHR and the enshrined rights that have
been set out in the Human rights Act 1998.
However
o the ability of the SC to influence policy and defend rights through interpreting the
HRA is also limited, due to the uncodified nature, meaning that the Act in addition to
Parliamentary Sovereignty.
o Because of this, there is a possibility that the HRA can be repealed and replaced by
something less powerful that would swing power back to parliament, such as a
British Bill of Rights, which Johnson and the Conservative Party have repeatedly
attempted to do.
o If this was to occur, the HRA would remove the provisions of the ECHR from the
jurisdiction of the UK Courts, meaning that people could only find redress for their
rights being infringed from the European Court of Human Rights as was the case
prior to 1998.
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