Report

Fixing Human Rights Law

This report from UK think tank Civitas looks at what has gone wrong with contemporary human rights legislation.

Fixing Human Rights Law by Dr. Michael Arnheim, a practising barrister, Sometime Fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge and author of 23 published books to date, provides an overview of what has gone wrong with contemporary human rights legislation – while suggesting ‘revocation’ by parliament is the best way forward. Focusing on the solution that any judicial decision on human rights law can be revoked by parliament through a statute, Arnheim considers this weapon in parliament’s arsenal is surprisingly unknown to many, hardly an exceptional power, and yet an integral part of parliamentary sovereignty – the bedrock principle of the British constitution. For Arnheim, human rights law is about everybody’s human rights – the human rights of the mass of law-abiding citizens – and not just the rights of the small minority of special interest groups championed by the self-styled ‘human rights’ lobby.