Safe in their hands? Britain’s Law Lords and human rights

This paper, which is the revised text of the first Stephen Livingstone Memorial Lecture delivered in February 2006, surveys the human rights jurisprudence of the House of Lords over the past 10 years. It considers not just how the Law Lords have responded to the Human Rights Act 1998 but also how they have developed the law on equality, asylum and immigration. In assessing whether human rights are ‘safe’ in the hands of the Law Lords, it looks, first, at how willing the Law Lords have been to engage with human rights arguments, concluding that they have relished such discourse. The piece then examines how rigorously the Lords have protected rights guaranteed by the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms 1950. The conclusion reached is that the Law Lords have been doing a good job on that front. What is preventing them from adopting an even more rights-based approach to their work in general is the UK’s stubborn adherence to the ‘dualist’ theory of international law. The author agrees with Lord Steyn that the time has come to reconsider that position.