Common Law Rights

The Human Rights Act 1998, which came into force in October 2000, was a wonderful achievement for the protection of human rights in United Kingdom law.  The HRA is, however, emphatically not the 'be all and end all' for domestic human rights protection under United Kingdom law. This paper examines the common law’s pre-existing underlay, and identifies the scope for invocation of rights beyond the HRA:ECHR.This paper was given at the Public Law Project Judicial Review Conference, October 2010.