Former Supreme Court Justice and anti-lockdown legend Jonathan Sumption has made the case for leaving the European Convention on Human Rights in the Spectator – all the more remarkable as a Remainer on Brexit. Here’s an excerpt.
No responsible critic of modern international human rights law proposes to do away with fundamental rights. The case is that the convention should be replaced with a domestic code of basic rights which would look very like it, with one important exception: it would not be subject to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg.
That exception is important because the real problem is not the convention but the Strasbourg court. Under Article 32 of the convention, the ECHR is the sole judge of its own jurisdiction. It can and does help itself to whatever additional powers and jurisdictions it likes.
Let us take one or two examples. The first Article of the convention limits its scope to the territorial jurisdictions of state parties. This accords with the principle of territoriality, which is one of the building blocks of international law. Yet in 2011 the court suddenly reversed its own previous decisions on the point and claimed jurisdiction over British military operations overseas in places such as Iraq and Afghanistan. At one point it created havoc by ruling that there was no right to detain captured Taliban fighters as prisoners of war without complying with regulations designed for policemen turning in pickpockets at European police stations.
To take another controversial example, the convention provides that state parties are bound only by the final decision of the court in cases brought against them, but the ECHR has claimed the right to impose binding interim orders on state parties before the arguments have even been heard. It recently exercised this power to stop the first flights to Rwanda.
The European Convention on Human Rights is a treaty. The ordinary rule of international law governing the interpretation of treaties is set out in another convention agreed in 1969 under the auspices of the United Nations by almost every country in the world. It provides that treaties are to be interpreted “in good faith in accordance with the ordinary meaning to be given to the terms of the treaty in their context and in the light of its object and purpose”. But in 1978 the Strasbourg judges proclaimed what they called the “living instrument doctrine”. According to this, the court claims the right to develop the convention by recognising new rights thought to be in the spirit of the original treaty although never envisaged in it.
Thus, the notorious Article 8, which ostensibly protects private and family life against the intrusions of the surveillance state, has been interpreted by the ECHR as extending to anything that intrudes upon an individual’s personal autonomy. Since most laws do that, the result is to give the court the power to review the whole range of domestic law. Examples over the past half-century have included immigration and deportation, extradition, criminal sentencing, the recording of crime, abortion, artificial insemination, same-sex relationships, child abduction, the policing of public demonstrations, employment and social security rights, legal aid, planning and environmental law, noise abatement, eviction for non-payment of rent and much else besides.
In the process, the ECHR has devalued the whole concept of human rights. It has transformed the convention from a noble body of truly fundamental principles, almost universally shared, into something at once intrusive and banal. It has become a template against which to assess most aspects of the ordinary domestic legal order on principles which are highly contentious and far from fundamental.
Worth reading in full.
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To me all this seems like one big academic discussion. All I know is that in the period 2020-2022 a number of my fundamental rights as a human being, the ones that supposedly have universal consensus, were trampled on and I was subjected to absolute tyranny.
I was locked up in my home, they tried to force me to cover my face whenever I left my home and they tried to force me to take an experimental medication.
And no where during that time did I hear anything from the ECHR or any body supposedly established for the protection of human rights.
So it’s all a load of bollocks as far as I’m concerned and this sort of discussion just one big jerk off.
I think a simple written bill of rights can help focus the nation on what it should be doing – something like the US bill of rights, which was written in order to put limits on state power. But it only means anything if people buy into it and push back when it is violated, which didn’t happen with covid. I commented on the proposals for a UK bill of rights a while back (not sure what has happened to that) and it was atrocious – full of caveats which obviously make any “right” meaningless.
At least having a UK version should lead to more accountability, but whatever we end up with will be a load of bollocks because since the Founding Fathers shaped the US we have lost our way and started to worship the state, and until we stop doing that we are lost.
“Former Supreme Court Justice and anti-lockdown legend Jonathan Sumption …”
I would not be so effusive.
He was good on lockdowns when few others were, but poor on “vaccines”
Unfortunately he does not seem to have understood that the two went hand-in-hand. Whether or not it was all planned from the very start or whether it was politicans becoming orgasmic when they discovered that a couple of ads accusing people of killing granny was all it took to go a mega-power grab, the fact is that any measures from November 2020 on were only ever intended to make pharma rich, use the global population as lab rats with zero liability and to get people to voluntarily sign up for digital ID incarceration by convincing them that an app and a green check on a phone would somehow prevent them from contracting and dying from the lurgy.
One of the most fundamental human rights is and must be bodily integrity. Quite sad that someone who undoubtedly believes in human rights allowed himself to be so easily deceived.
Yes I would like to grill him regarding that. Francis Hoar is a lot more red pilled and was equally outspoken from the start.
Seconded
Absolutely. Spoken out against lockdowns and then justified his support for the jabs as the way to get out of lockdowns.
One of the revelations of the covid terror was just how stupid clever people could be.
Any discussion about a court of human rights, whether European, British or International, needs to actually address what the human rights are that they refer to in their titles. Like Stewart here, I think the very fact that our basic human rights have been walked over and trod into the dirt during the past 3 years and counting seems to make a mockery of the term. My human rights, as far as I am concerned, include the right to free speech including the right to protest against unfair and unjust laws, to congregate with others, to travel unhindered, to not be coerced or forced into medical interventions against my will, to be able to have clean water, to be able to grow my own food, to not be discriminated against for my choices as long as no harm has been done to others, to be able to earn a living, to be left alone by the state to live my life as I choose so long as no harm to others or others’ property and that’s for starters. I am not interested in legal jargon obscuring the facts of my rights. It’s all pretty basic really but the lawyers won’t tell you that and it can all be encapsulated in the term ‘live and let live’.
Spot on AE with the addition that the state , in all its forms should just get the Fuck out of our lives and only do basic stuff that we want to pay taxes for it to do well not badly.
Since Blair ,the fascist, we have had nothing but increased state involvement in more and more of our lives .That too must end ..
I’m not sure that clean water and the ability to earn a living are rights in the same way as most of the other things you describe. Clean water would be a contractual relationship with the water company, and something vaguely like a contractual relationship with the state if you pay taxes which in part go to funding water related stuff. I think a right with regard to earning a living would be for the state not to interfere in that save when it had a compelling interest in doing so. In general I don’t think “rights” should cost anything to provide because as soon as they do, someone will have an excuse to confiscate property from one person to satisfy the “rights” of another.
The ECHR is Council of Europe and thus not an EU entity.
I’ve had it with all of them..any supranatural, global, un-elected body will undoubtedly be rife with cronyism, financial malpractice and a woke agenda that does nothing for humanity…. and all of them should be disbanded…
The EHCR is funded by the Council of Europe ..supposedly with money from member states…yeah..right…
“With its global and overarching political approach, UN Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development has been highly relevant for the Council of Europe, which has, from the outset, been contributing to the process which led to the adoption of Agenda 2030..
By definition, our philosophy is that most, if not all, of the Council of Europe’s activities are relevant and contribute to the implementation of Agenda 2030.
the Council of Europe’s role as an international organisation is to assist and facilitate member States in their contribution to SDG implementation. In particular, the organisation, through its instruments, can contribute to the national implementation reporting by member States..
Different cheek…same globalist arse….
Lord Sumption, where have you been? Where have ALL your legal colleagues been? As our human rights have been stripped one by one, crickets. If the legal profession, does not defend our human rights, stand up for those rights, this country will collapse. The Online Safety Bill voted on and approved in a few days after mp’s returned from their summer holidays. This kind of efficiency is unheard of in Parliament and yet…two days, they managed to get this job done in “warp speed”. How about some pro bono work for all those injured by covid vaxxes, for the families who lost a loved one because of the covid vaxxes. The data is all out there. Surely, the legal profession might aid those whose human rights were extinguished when they were forced to take an experimental biological, with no safety or efficacy data, in order to keep their jobs. Where have you people been?
The ECHR, with the encouragement of the UN, is attempting to develop a One World Rule of Law.
The One Ring to Bind Us All.