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Why bother with Rights when Public Safety is at risk?seen as a necessary condition of a just society, but it wouldhardly be sufficient—many other social and economic reformswould be necessary in order to secure the kind of social justicethat many would regard as acceptable, let alone ideal. Thus noassumption is made here that to discuss rights is to deal withthe most important social issues. Moreover, we must be on ourguard about human rights talk that vaunts general principleswithout ensuring that in practice the proclaimed rights arerespected—which often requires the investment of publicmoney, and changes of attitude and ethical orientation amongthose officials who have day-to-day interaction with rightsbearers.Put in straightforward language, this means that thepolice and other law enforcement agencies must respect humanrights in their work, before there can be any rejoicing in thehigh-sounding declarations of human rights.(in) Criminal procedure and human rightsThe very concept of criminal procedure is often viewed withsuspicion, insofar as it is taken to imply technicalities whichmay turn into obstacles. The United Kingdom has brought thesubstance of the European Convention on Human Rights into itslegal systems, but there have been murmurings among someMinisters of the Crown and some judges about the kinds ofrights declared in the Convention. Whatever the "spirit of theConvention" means in Strasbourg, there is evidence in somegovernment and judicial circles of a spirit of minimalism,particularly when it comes to the rights of suspects and defendantsin the criminal process. The unspoken attitude of someseems to be that, if we have to have the Convention, we shouldconfine its influence as narrowly as possible. Yet this attitude coexistswith declarations of great enthusiasm for the HumanRights Act and the Convention.Thus Lord Bingham was one of the judges who had arguedthe case for incorporating the Convention into domestic law. Inhis 1993 article he wrote strongly about the importance ofhaving the Convention available to British courts as a kind of"higher law", agreeing that "the protection of its citizens'fundamental rights is generally seen as an important function ofcivil society." 7 Yet his approach to the first major decision on theHuman Rights Act 1998, Brown v. Stott? consists of a search forways of minimising the effect of Article 6 and its jurisprudence.Similarly, it was the then Home Secretary, Jack Straw, whopresented the Human Rights Bill to Parliament with highcommendations and an apparent pride in his role in what he
Why bother with Rights when Public Safety is at risk?saw as a historic measure: "In future years historians mayregard the Bill as one of the most important measures of thisParliament." 9 Again, "the Human Rights Act 1998 is the mostsignificant statement of human rights in domestic law since the1689 Bill of Rights." 10 As Mr Straw explained more fully in theHouse of Commons:Nothing in the Bill will take away the freedoms that our citizensalready enjoy. However, those freedoms alone are not enough: theyneed to be complemented by positive rights that individuals canassert when they believe that they have been treated unfairly by thestate, or that the state and its institutions have failed properly toprotect them. The Bill will guarantee to everyone the means toenforce a set of basic civil and political rights, establishing a floorbelow which standards will not be allowed to fall. 11However, there were soon doubts about how low the floorreally was. The same Mr Straw presented to the House theDangerous People with Severe Personality Disorder Bill 2000and the bills which became the Terrorism Act 2000, the Regulationof Investigatory Powers Act 2000, and the Criminal Justiceand Police Act 2001—all of which display the kind of minimalismdescribed above, in the form of a government determinationto provide for individual suspects or defendants the mostslender safeguards for which there was a possible argument ofConvention compatibility.In so far as this minimalist attitude is to be found—and Ibelieve it may be stronger in the area of criminal justice than insome other spheres—it tends to undermine the rights which aredeclared by the Convention to be fundamental freedoms. Thisprompts questions about why we should honour these rights atall. Do the rights in the European Convention, and particularlythose in Article 6 as interpreted by the European Court ofHuman Rights, have any intrinsic claim on our attention?Should we be enthusiastic about them, treating them as fundamentalrights on which we ought to be prepared to build, orshould we regard them merely as inconvenient obstacles to beavoided when public policy is being developed?(iv) A hypothetical caseI want to start this first lecture with a hypothetical case. Let ussuppose it is an autumn evening. You have to go out to ameeting. You have a son or a brother aged about 18, and youleave him at home with another young man of the same agewho is visiting him. You arrive back home at 9 p.m. to find a
Page 1: THEKAMLYNHuman Rights, Serious Crim
Page 11: TABLE OF CONTENTSAcknowledgementsCo
Page 14 and 15: The Hamlyn Lectures1961 British Jus
Page 16 and 17: The Hamlyn Lectures1989 Protection
Page 18 and 19: The Hamlyn TrustProfessor N. Dawson
Page 20 and 21: Table of CasesBrown (Margaret) v. S
Page 22 and 23: Table of CasesLooseley [2001] UKHL
Page 24 and 25: Table of CasesVan Mechelen v. Nethe
Page 26 and 27: Why bother with Rights when Public
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Page 73: Why bother with Rights when Public
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Evaluating the Strasbourg and Briti
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Taking a "Balanced" View of the Pub
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IndexCriminal Justice and Police Ac
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IndexFair trial rights—cont.curta
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IndexPublic interest—cont.fundame
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Does the United Kingdom StillHave a
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