Invigorating human rights academia
Volume 2, October 2009
It is a delight to welcome this second edition of the UCL Human Rights Review. UCL has been a pioneer in the field of student-edited journals of high academic quality. This volume brings together scholarly contributions from students and from academic staff under a student Editor-in-Chief, this year Pasquale Annicchino, and Deputy Editor-in-Chief, this year Justin Leslie. They have proved that last year’s outstanding volume was not just a flash in the pan.
This year the ‘Law Lords’ have left the House of Lords and been transformed into the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. There has been much debate about whether, in time, the change in name and place will affect the way in which we conceive our role. We spend a good deal of our time on human rights issues in one form or another. Shall we get bolder or more cautious now we have left the protective cover of Parliament? If, which is not admitted, we were to get bolder might it be, not only in our relations with the UK Government and Parliament, but also in our relations with the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg?
Two of this year’s papers engage with Lord Hoffmann’s criticism of the European Court of Human Rights for ‘teaching its grandmother to suck eggs.’ Eric Metcalfe suggests that, if this is so, ‘it is because grandmothers sometimes appear to have forgotten how.’ As the only grandmother on the Supreme Court, I have never known how to suck eggs. But I do think that I can recognise a fair trial when I see one. The Strasbourg Court is trying to uphold some precepts which were once taken for granted in this country but have since been modified in the light of changing conditions. Just as the Human Rights Act involves the
courts in a dialogue with Government and Parliament, it may increasingly involve us in a dialogue with Strasbourg as we seek to explain why we think that some of those modifications are justified.
The courts may be increasingly preoccupied with human rights but others are more sceptical. As Helen Wildbore argues, we need constantly to reaffirm and promote their importance outside the narrow confines of the courts. And that is what the UCL Human Rights Review seeks to do. Congratulations to all involved!
Brenda Hale of Richmond
October 2009