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10 - Human Rights

from Part II - Five Themes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2023

Sionaidh Douglas-Scott
Affiliation:
Queen Mary University of London
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Summary

Human rights have had a fragile status in Britain, given the overpowering doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty, which has enabled a parliamentary majority to achieve any policy in the absence of entrenched constitutional protections. Plans to repeal the 1998 Human Rights Act are evidence of this. Dicey wrote that parliamentary sovereignty was tempered by the rule of law in the UK, but it is unclear from his work how the rule of law could operate to override the will of a despotic parliamentary majority. Brexit adds to this precarity, by removing EU human rights protection from UK law (which had something close to an entrenched status, while the UK was an EU member). This calculated deletion of fundamental rights – involved in the deliberate exclusion of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights from UK law post-Brexit – is almost unparalleled in the Western world (although perhaps the US Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, which removed the protected status of the right to abortion from US constitutional law, comes close, at least for that right).

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Chapter
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Brexit, Union, and Disunion
The Evolution of British Constitutional Unsettlement
, pp. 467 - 495
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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  • Human Rights
  • Sionaidh Douglas-Scott, Queen Mary University of London
  • Book: Brexit, Union, and Disunion
  • Online publication: 26 October 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108894951.013
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  • Human Rights
  • Sionaidh Douglas-Scott, Queen Mary University of London
  • Book: Brexit, Union, and Disunion
  • Online publication: 26 October 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108894951.013
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Human Rights
  • Sionaidh Douglas-Scott, Queen Mary University of London
  • Book: Brexit, Union, and Disunion
  • Online publication: 26 October 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108894951.013
Available formats
×