Back to the future: reforming human rights

European human rights law has created “an extra tier of litigation” and produced “problems, anomalies and even abuses”, a barrister has claimed.

Writing in NLJ this week, barrister and former reader at Southampton University Alec Samuels argues the case for reform. He suggests it is for the UK Parliament to determine the degree of infringement of personal liberty required to guarantee public safety in respect of control orders against suspected terrorist subjects, telephone tapping and other matters.

Samuels contends that that “unfair or unreasonable decisions in unmeritorious cases, particularly where criminals and illegal immigrants are concerned” has led members of the public to “become positively hostile, and this is a regrettable attitude to human rights.”