Suchergebnisse

This book charts the role played by the European Convention on Human Rights during the conflict in Northern Ireland from 1968 to the present day. It offers a systematic case-study of the Convention's capacity to protect human rights in a society wracked by terrorism and political conflict.

Comparing supreme courts / Brice Dickson -- 'Restrained activism' in the High Court of Australia / Fiona Wheeler and John Williams -- Judicial activism in the Supreme Court of Canada / Kent Roach -- The Supreme Court of India / Venkat Iyer -- The Supreme Court of Ireland / William Binchy -- Judicial activism in Israel / Eli Salzberger -- Judicial activism and New Zealand's appellate courts / Bruce Harris -- Judicial activism of a special type : South Africa's top courts since 1994 / Hugh Corder -- Judicial activism in the House of Lords 1995-2007 / Brice Dickson -- The United States of America / Mark Tushnet

Although supporters of human rights are sometimes reluctant to admit it, the very concept of human rights is a contested one. People reasonably differ as to what qualifies as a human right and as to why that is the case. Consensus on these issues is reached within different societies, or at the international level, only through processes of political deliberation and negotiation. In recent years all sorts of claims have been wrapped up in human rights language in an attempt to make them more acceptable to voters and to candidates who seek those votes when standing for political office. Within large-scale conflict situations, such as have occurred in Northern Ireland, South Africa, the Balkans and Turkey, it is particularly tempting for different political factions to exploit human rights language in order to boost their own political claims. The challenge for human rights academics and theorists is to try to prevent the concept of human rights from being unduly distorted as a result of inappropriate politicisation of the traditional vocabulary used in this context. ; peer-reviewed

This article provides evidence for the extent to which the UK Supreme Court as a body - and Supreme Court Justices as individuals - have displayed an activist or restrained attitude to their decision-making role. Taking October 2009 as the starting point (when the UKSC came into existence) the article surveys the degree to which the Court and individual Justices have (1) departed from precedents, (2) interpreted legislation in unanticipated ways, (3) rejected the government's position on matters of social, economic or foreign policy, and (4) developed the common law. The article concludes that, while the Supreme Court as a whole remains as conservative as the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords which preceded it (with the possible exception of its approach to immigration law), there are notable differences between the attitudes of individual Justices, one or two of whom appear to be straining at the leash.