Posts Tagged Human Rights
Human rights: in praise of practice over principle
Posted by Nick Cowen in Civil Liberty, Crime, Human Rights on 12/12/2011
Sigrid Rausing offers a powerful and clear defence of keeping European Court of Human Rights’ decisions superior to the democratic will of Parliament. But her argument is lacking in a number of important respects and, in the end, risks weakening the power of the concept of human rights to command reasoned agreement in a democratic society.
Full-Court Press
Posted by Carolina Bracken in Civil Liberty, Crime, Human Rights, Politics on 02/09/2011
Over past weeks, both David Cameron and Nick Clegg have written candidly about the “misrepresentation of human rights”, with the Deputy PM in particular bemoaning how those in power have “belittled the relevance of rights at home”. Their ambitions to “get a grip” on this distortion are essential and to be welcomed, as the media and public bodies continue to pollute the rights discourse with inaccuracies, errors and fallacious propaganda.
Strasbourg Court flouting democratic self-government
Posted by Nick Cowen in Civil Liberty, Human Rights, Press Release on 21/04/2011
Following Parliament’s rejection of votes for prisoners, a new Civitas report calls for urgent reform of human rights legislation to keep European judges from deciding British law.
Strasbourg in the Dock, by international lawyer and Conservative MP Dominic Raab, argues that judges have gone beyond their legitimate powers of interpretation in their now infamous Hirst ruling. He finds some of the European judges are ‘woefully lacking in experience’ and, as a consequence, ‘are undermining the credibility and value of the Court’.
See full press release.
Buy the report on Amazon and on Amazon kindle.
Dictators and Democracy
Posted by Natalie Hamill in European Union on 24/02/2011
Last week’s EU blog considered the limitations of the EU’s European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) in light of the recent Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions. As events in North Africa have continued to deteriorate, it seems appropriate to consider the EU’s response to Libya’s revolutionary efforts. Whereas Tunisia was the benchmark of stability in the South Mediterranean, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya has never harboured sincere commitment to democratic reform. This begs the question: why has the EU compromised a catalogue of its most fundamental values – democracy, the rule of law, human rights protection – to pander to a volatile dictator?
Lack of Commons Sense
Posted by Carolina Bracken in Civil Liberty, Crime, Human Rights, Politics on 23/02/2011
Less than a fortnight after MPs rightly staged a resistance against the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), political heavy weights have now turned their fire on the UK Supreme Court. Not only are the criticisms of our highest domestic court entirely unfounded, they betray, at best, a dangerous confusion about the relationship between Parliament and the judiciary, and at worst a deliberate attempt to disregard this fundamental, constitutional balance.
A Little Less Conversation…
Posted by Carolina Bracken in Civil Liberty, European Union, Foreign Affairs, Human Rights on 28/01/2011
Human Rights Watch World Report 2011 has slammed the EU for its overreliance on dialogue rather than action in tackling human rights abuse, and for its “obsequious” approach to known rights violators. Whilst there is no inherent harm in cooperative dialogue, the EU seems “particularly infatuated” with this discursive model.
