The United Kingdom and Human Rights - College of Social ...

Human Rights Talk 75
irreconcilable. That is the position under the United
States Constitution, a model followed by both the Irish
and Indian Constitutions, which contain enumerated
fundamental rights provisions in addition to preambular
guiding Directive Principles relating to rights.
In summary, the ideas and language surrounding
discussion of human rights have been reflected in
various mechanisms of protection evolved by state legal
systems. The first model, which applies to the United
Kingdom, incorporates most major moral rights or
human rights into the ordinary law as legal rights. The
second model is a declaration of human rights' principles,
relevant when interpreting ambiguous provisions
in laws. The third model is an Act of constitutional
significance, setting out human rights' standards, with
such an Act retrospectively repealing inconsistent laws
and having future interpretive effect. The fourth model
is to enumerate rights as constitutional rights within the
body of the constitution, thus subjecting them to its
amending process, and often entrenching them, assuming
that the constitution is inflexible, that is, it requires
more than a simple majority, with there being some
special procedure for amendment.
Psychological Consequences of the Use of Human
Rights Language
I turn now to psychological consequences of the use of
human rights language. The dramatic language of
"human rights and fundamental freedoms," combined
with talk of inalienability, immutability, imprescriptibility,
universalism and absolutism, is emotive. The
effect is the greater because human rights represent
values in which people believe, for example, the worth