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“Foreign Criminals,” the Human Rights Act, and the New Constitutional Politics of the United Kingdom

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2022

Rebecca Hamlin
Rebecca Hamlin*
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
*
Contact the author at rhamlin@legal.umass.edu.
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Abstract

Since the passage of the 1998 Human Rights Act, popular anxiety about increasing judicial power over immigration has led to a very public debate about the future of British constitutionalism. Drawing on an analysis of case law, 747 media articles, and interviews with human rights advocates, legal scholars, and government officials, I trace the development of a popular constitutionalism in the United Kingdom, fueled by resistance to international human rights law and directed at repealing the act. I demonstrate how the tabloid media amplifies jurisprudentially insignificant cases, especially regarding “foreign criminals,” and erodes political support for the entrenchment of rights.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Law and Courts , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , Fall 2016 , pp. 437 - 461
Copyright
© 2016 by the Law and Courts Organized Section of the American Political Science Association. All rights reserved.

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Footnotes

The author is grateful to Scott Blinder, Paul Collins, Chuck Epp, Seth Goldman, Justin Gross, Matthew Ingram, David Klein, Julie Novkov, Tatishe Nteta, Jesse Rhodes, Gordon Silverstein, Susan Sterett, and Stephan Stohler as well as the anonymous reviewers for their valuable feedback at various stages of this project.

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