"Human Rights and the United Kingdom Supreme Court."

This book explains and critiques the position adopted by the UK Supreme Court on disputes involving human rights, especially those protected by the Human Rights Act 1998. Building upon the fact that the UK Supreme Court, which began operating in 2009, has inherited case law developed over many decades by the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords, the book considers whether the Supreme Court’s current views are internally consistent and externally in line with the standards adopted by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. After three chapters which describe the origins of the Supreme Court and analyse its jurisprudence on the concept of human rights and on the procedural dimensions of the Human Rights Act 1998, the book examines how the Court (and the House of Lords before it) has interpreted the principal Convention rights that are given effect in UK law by the 1998 Act. It finds in relation to almost every right that the top UK court has been unduly cautious and restrained, either because it does not wish to tread on the toes of Parliament or because it is unwilling to go further in protecting human rights than the European Court of Human Rights has already gone. The book pays particular attention to instances in which decisions of the top domestic court have been overturned in Strasbourg and to the occasions on which there has been a prolonged ‘dialogue’ between the two courts over a contentious issue.