This book, as the title suggests, explores the impact of the Human Rights Act 1998 (‘the HRA’) on the private law of England and Wales. The HRA applies throughout the United Kingdom, and so it is hoped that the discussion here will assist those practising in the UK's other jurisdictions, most obviously Scotland and Northern Ireland, but no attempt has been made to address the detail of the law in those areas, and where Welsh law has been modified by the Welsh Assembly, the discussion should be taken to apply to English law.

The scheme of the book and the inquiry being undertaken by it is more fully explained in the Introduction (Chapter 1). The purpose of this Preface is to point up a particular feature of this book in light of its multiple authors. Often such works are simply a set of essays on a common subject, and can be read individually with no loss of understanding. This book is intended not to be quite as severable as that. There is a common project being undertaken, which does mean that the reader will get the best out of it by considering various chapters together.