Jul 10
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UK pushback against Europe’s human rights extremism
The Daily Telegraph – July 30, 2010
We will not accept your word as law, Supreme Court tells Europe
European judges do not always understand the British way of doing things and UK courts will not simply “lie down” to their rulings, Strasbourg was warned yesterday. Lord Phillips, the President of the UK Supreme Court, said judges at the European Court of Human Rights may not “fully appreciate” how things work in the UK. His deputy, Lord Hope insisted courts here will not just accept everything Strasbourg says and will insist some rulings are explained “more fully.”
The comments followed a series of attacks on the influence of European rulings on British law from some of the country’s most senior judges. In April, Lord Judge, the Lord Chief Justice, said courts were basing too many decisions on European human rights legislation rather than English common law. He said it was up to judges to “save” English common law by relying on it for precedents instead of the European Convention on Human Rights. Last month, Lord Neuberger, Master of the Rolls, told judges in Strasbourg to show “more acute appreciation” of the independence of English law.
Speaking at the end of the Supreme Court’s first full legal year, Lord Phillips said: “Whenever Strasbourg gives a judgment which leads us to believe that perhaps they haven’t fully appreciated how things work in this country, we invite them to think again.”