Preliminaries: objectives, taxonomy and method

Why is criminal procedure relevant to the topic of judicial reasoning under the Human Rights Act 1998? Readers might be forgiven for thinking that the connection between these topics is not self-evident. Indeed, several of the participants in the Durham conference from which the chapters comprising this volume are drawn explicitly posed the question to me: interesting as it might be in its own sphere, what place does a paper on criminal procedure have in a conference or edited collection devoted to exploring the impact of the HRA on judicial reasoning in the United Kingdom?

I hope that this chapter will supply a convincing answer to that question. On one view, it expresses a perfectly reasonable challenge, but it also, I think, betrays misconceptions and even a certain ignorance that I would like to try to dispel. The question has, if not exactly hidden profundity, then at least partly occluded depths. Below its surface lurk other, taxonomic and methodological questions with important theoretical and practical ramifications. To which legal topics or issues is the HRA pertinent? Should an evaluation of its impact consider every eligible example of judicial reasoning or only a sample selection? If a sampling approach is preferred, or dictated on pragmatic grounds, by what criteria should inclusion in the sample be arbitrated?