A decade of human rights in criminal justice

• Published in: Criminal law review 2014-05 (5), p.325-337
• Main Author: Ashworth, Andrew
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Criminal justice; Criminal justice, Administration of; Criminal law; Criminal sentences; Deportation; European Court of Human Rights; Human rights; Life imprisonment; Offenders
• ISSN: 0011-135X

In the early years after the implementation in 2000 of the Human Rights Act 1998, it was a commonplace to suggest that the greatest impact of European human rights law on criminal justice would be felt in criminal procedure and evidence, and that the criminal law itself would be less affected. And so it has been. The purpose of this article is to provide a review of developments in human rights and criminal justice between 2003 and 2013. The review is necessarily selective, given the unremitting flow of case law and legislation. The last decade has been characterised by a simmering tension between three institutions-the British Government, the European Court of Human Rights, and the UK Supreme Court (formerly the House of Lords). Differences of opinion between two of those three institutions have risen to the surface on several occasions. A major clash between the European Court and the British Government occurred just before the start of the period under review, when the Court held that the decision to release a prisoner from the preventive part of a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment needed to be subject to periodic review by a judicial body; and the House of Lords followed the logic of the European Court's decision, further incurring the government's wrath. A more recent example is the clash between the European Court of Human Rights and the UK Supreme Court over exceptions to the hearsay rule and the right to confrontation under the Convention; the strengths and weaknesses of the positions taken up by the two sets of courts were tellingly analysed by Laura Hoyano in an article earlier this year.