Case Studies - Human Rights Flashcards
The ‘attack’ of the European Court of Human Rights on the British press for misleading reports
Background:
- Paul Mahoney stated that it was important for the UK to implement the Hirst Judgement of 2005 which decided that the blanket ban on voting by convicted prisoners was unlawful
- The Hirst case was the source of a Daily Mail et al report in 2013 which judged that human right’s courts had handed 202 criminals £4.4 million worth of funded payouts, and average of £22,000 a person
- Philip Davies MP requested on the 10th September to know about damages, costs or compensation awarded by human rights courts since 1998, and the government issued a 30 page response
The ‘attack’ of the European Court of Human Rights on the British press for misleading reports - the document
- The document distinguished clearly between the costs, which the losing government has to pay to successful clients lawyers, and damages, which are intended to compensate the person whose rights have been breached by the government’s failure to comply with the human rights convention
- According to the statement of the registrar, the total paid compensation actually was round £1.7 million, with courts rarely paying the full amount of compensation as legal fees in the UK are particularly high
- Damages were also not fully paid to criminals
- The 202 cases lost by the UK over 15 years also accounts for only 1.5% of the 13,515 UK cases considered by the courts
- After denial of claims that Strasbourg judges are unelected and inexperienced in law, Friberg, the registrar who issued the report and is the senior staff lawyer of the European Courts, stated a concern about the frequent misinterpretation of their activities in British media, and the confusion of cost showing the distorted picture of the court’s decisions
- They also did not understand why the media failed to check the conclusions they had drawn with the courts themselves, and although many courts publish press summaries of decisions, this is the first time a court has responded to inaccurate reporting of its work
The ‘attack’ of the European Court of Human Rights on the British press for misleading reports - political implications
This came at a time of journalists seeking to bring a human rights challenge to the government plans for press regulation - the patience of the courts has snapped over the misreporting, as it provides ‘fertile soil’ Conservative politicians such as the justice and home secretary who argue the UK should not be bound by the decision of the Strasbourg courts and therefore the ECHR
Cases to support the Human Rights Act
1) Steven - held against his will;
An autistic man named Steven Neary was placed in temporary care for a few days but the authorities were concerned over his behaviour and moved him to a special unit against his family’s wishes for a year. His father took the case to court, where it was decided that the council had violated his human rights to liberty and respect for private family life - this act was essential to helping Steven and protecting others just like him
2) ZH - Autistic teenager manhandled by police;
In 2013, a teenager wa awarded £28,250 of damages after it was confirmed police had breached his right to be free from inhuman and degrading treatment and his right to liberty after they pinned him down, restrained him and isolated him in a police van after he jumped into the pool on a school trip and had concerned pool staff.
3) Jenny - spied on by the council;
Jenny and Tim Paton, along with their 3 children, were surveyed by the local authorities after an anonymous tip-off was received that suggested they were lying about being in a particular school catchment area. For three weeks, officials sat outside their home, taking notes and photographs, which left the family feeling violated and the council was found guilty of breaching their human rights.
Cases against the Human Rights Act
1) Abu Qatada -
His deportation following terrorism charges was blocked by the European Court of Human Rights, with judges fearing that evidence obtained by torture would be used against him, and has now been cleared of terror charges after being flown to Jordan in 2013; this caused MP’s to be frustrated by the ECHR infringing on UK law and court decisions and overriding them
2) Votes for prisoners -
EC of HR told the UK it must allow some inmates to vote, which meant a change to the law that most MP’s did not agree with, leading to a political battle
3) Army claims -
The MoD has had more than 1,000 damages claims made against it for breaching HR in foreign conflicts, with some challenges coming from former enemies and others being families of soldiers who have died on active service or during training; it undermines the ability of the forces to do their job and keep us safe due to the time and money it takes to deal with these claims
Conflict of collective and individual rights - Should religious groups / organisations / businesses refuse to serve members of the LGBTQ+ community?
The Case:
- Ashers Baking Company Ltd in Northern Ireland, the owners were prosecuted for refusing to bake a cake for a gay rights activist who had asked them to incorporate the slogan ‘Support gay marriage’ along with a picture of Bert and Ernie from Sesame Street and the logo of the Queerspace organisation in the decoration
- Clash of rights - freedom and expression and thought and LGBTQ+ discrimination being illegal
Conclusion -
- In October 2018, the Supreme Court overturned the judgments of lower courts that the bakery was guilty of discrimination - the argument was that the bakery did not discriminate against the customer who happened to be gay, but rather the message on the cake which they would have rejected regardless
- Therefore the issue was argued not to be sexuality but ‘forced speech’ - e.g. can a Labour-supporting printer refuse to produce Conservative Party publicity or vice versa
- Example of how individual right of free speech and expression can prevail over collective rights of a particular group
Similar cases -
- Similar cases with a different outcome in 2013 - Christian owners of Cornish guest house lost a court case refusing to allow a same-sex couple to share a double bedroom
Conflict of collective and individual rights - Should individuals be able to carry out FGM as part of their religious / cultural identity?
Case:
- Traditional cultural practices such as these are illegally practised in the UK - female circumcision is a common practice amongst certain communities in parts of Africa and the Middle East
- It is however contradictory to most of the cultural norms and values of most other countries
Under UK child safeguarding rules, schools and social services are required by law to report immediately to the police any suspected case of FGM, which is illegal under the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003
- This is a clash between individual rights of a citizen to follow cultural practices and the collective rights of wider UK society who view this as child abuse
Conclusion:
- Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003
- The important rights of the individual child, where the solution is clear as the rights of the child take precedent and the lack of informed consent makes it straightforward to ban the practice, despite its status as a collective right and tradition in certain communities
Conflict of collective and individual rights - Rights of Uber drivers
Case:
- In 2016, two former Uber drivers sued the firm claiming they were employees and not self-employed as Uber claimed
- By claiming they were employees, they gain entitlement to sick pay, holiday pay and minimum wage
- They therefore were fighting for the collective rights of all Uber drivers and were supported in their court case by the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain
- However, they were opposed by Uber and fellow Uber drivers who enjoyed the freedom of self-employment and asserted their individual rights regarding their employment status - didn’t want the collective rights
Conclusion:
- Ultimately, Uber lost the case and the collective rights of all its workers were protected at the expense of some individual drivers
Case study - ‘Harper’s Law’: Killing emergency service workers brings life sentence
- Named after PC Andrew Harper, who was killed after being dragged behind a vehicle following a burglary
- Those who kill an emergency service worker are now at risk of a life sentence after campaign from Harper’s wife over the low sentences handed to the teenagers responsible for his death
- The rights debate - the individual rights of the person convicted to a fair trial vs the collective rights for emergency service workers to have greater protection on their lives
- Resolution - law recently passed in 2021, but not without controversy and potential implications for who is included, who is wrongly convicted, what counts as an intentional killing and whether it is fair to infringe on people’s rights this way to value others more
