Europe’s human rights court: Britain takes exception

The United Kingdom has always had a fraught relationship with certain European institutions, and there’s new tension between the United Kingdom and the European Court of Human Rights, which ruled in 2005 that Britain must allow its prisoners to vote. Last month, a right-leaning British think tank argued in a report that the court consistently ...

By , a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies.

The United Kingdom has always had a fraught relationship with certain European institutions, and there's new tension between the United Kingdom and the European Court of Human Rights, which ruled in 2005 that Britain must allow its prisoners to vote. Last month, a right-leaning British think tank argued in a report that the court consistently overstepped its bounds and that the UK should demand reforms and even consider withdrawing:

The United Kingdom has always had a fraught relationship with certain European institutions, and there’s new tension between the United Kingdom and the European Court of Human Rights, which ruled in 2005 that Britain must allow its prisoners to vote. Last month, a right-leaning British think tank argued in a report that the court consistently overstepped its bounds and that the UK should demand reforms and even consider withdrawing:

The report claims the 47 Strasbourg judges have "virtually no democratic legitimacy" and are poorly qualified compared to Britain’s own senior judges.

Lord Hoffman, a former Law Lord, who wrote the foreword to the report, said Strasbourg has "taken upon itself an extraordinary power to micromanage the legal systems of the member states".

The report says the ECHR is a "virtually unaccountable supra-national bureaucracy".

The head of that court is worried enough that he warned this week that a British boycott of the court might unravel the institution:

A United Kingdom boycott of the European Court of Human Rights could spark a chain reaction that undermines the body, an official warned.

Court political chief Thorbjorn Jagland said Britain should think about the possible consequences of what it’s considering, the EUobserver reported. "If one country starts to opt out of the convention system and the court, it could be the start of a process that others will follow," he said.

David Bosco is a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies. He is the author of The Poseidon Project: The Struggle to Govern the World’s Oceans. Twitter: @multilateralist

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