Constitutional and Administrative Law

Throughout the latter half of the twentieth century UK policy makers and constitutional lawyers grappled with how to incorporate human rights concerns into a constitution based upon the theoretically unlimited legislative power of Parliament. This chapter charts progress towards this goal, examining first the inadequacies of the protection of ‘civil liberties’ in the UK under common law and statute. We then consider how other countries have attempted to reconcile majoritarian democratic politics with legal protections for individual rights, and how these efforts influenced the UK in the development of the Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA). The remainder of the chapter examines the scheme of the HRA 1998, considering what rights were incorporated under the Act and the powers that the courts gained over legislation and over the activities of public bodies.