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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2018
Proposals for a new constitutional settlement have highlighted issues, many of them factitious, about the Human Rights Act. This paper suggests that the relationship of rights to duties is poorly understood, and that the majority of recognised rights already carry corresponding duties, but that to try to make the enjoyment of rights conditional on the fulfilment of duties is neither principled nor practicable. It is suggested that, using mutual respect as a sounder basis, a larger Bill of Rights can be contemplated. But good constitutions cannot be willed into being: pending the arrival of a constitutional moment, reform is likely to be a process of interest-group wrangling in which the most that can be looked for are some modest but necessary reforms.
1. ‘Blair hit by rights law rap’ Sun 26 July 2006.
2. HM Inspectorate of Probation An Independent Review of a Serious Further Offence case: Anthony Rice, May 2006.
3. DCA Review of the Implementation of the Human Rights Act: Myths and Misconceptions, July 2006 and Joint Committee on Human Rights Thirty Second Annual Report, 7 November 2006.
4. Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor The Governance of Britain Cm 7170, 2007.
5. Rt Hon J Straw MP, Mackenzie-Stuart Lecture, University of Cambridge Faculty of Law, 25 October 2007.
6. Justice Albie Sachs ‘Do wicked people have human rights?’ Annual Paul Sieghart Memorial Lecture at the British Institute of Human Rights (London, 2006).
7. YL v Birmingham City Council [2007] UKHL 27.
8. Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor, above n 4.
