evaluating the status of the supreme court

• role of the Human Rights Act 1998

  • came into force in 2000
  • incorporated most articles of the ECHR
  • allows UK citizens to pursue cases directly to UK courts
  • prior, cases were heard in Strasbourg
• significance of ECHR

  • prisoner voting rights case study
• what does it mean to derogate from?

  Parliament can declare an exemption from an article
• Derogation / anti-terrorism case study

  • Blair derogated from Article 5 which gave individuals the right to liberty and security in cases of suspended terrorism
  • 2005 control orders allowed the authorities to limit the freedom of movement of such individuals
  • Anti-terrorism, Crime and security Act 2001 (ATCSA)
• What did the Belmarsh case do?

  • house of lords ruled in favour of the detainees, finding that the indefinite detention provisions of the ATCSA were incompatible with the ECHR
  • Gov introduced control orders instead - imposing restrictions such as curfews and electronic tagging
• limitations of the Supreme Court’s power under the HRA:

  • HRA can be amended or derogated
  • courts can make a ruling of incompatibility - cannot strike it down
  • where statute law is unclear, justices can use the HRA to make precedent
• What is meant be ‘quasi- legislative’ power

  • the impact of differences in the Court’s interpretations over time can appear tantamount to a legislative change even though parliament has made no changes to statue law