Municipal public law (by which is meant the public law of national or sub-national polities, including but not limited to local government) is always influenced by events taking place elsewhere in the world and the activities and norms of other polities. For example, the existence of a state depends at least partly on its recognition by other states, and political theories and legal ideas have always flowed across and between regions of the world even if they provoked opposition rather than adoption or adaptation. Yet despite, or perhaps because of, this, any state has good reasons for controlling the introduction of foreign legal and constitutional norms to its own legal order. It is important to check that the norms are compatible with one’s own national values and interests before allowing them to operate within one’s own system. A state which values a commitment to the rule of law, human rights, or democratic accountability is entitled to place national controls over potentially disruptive foreign influences. This chapter considers the nature and legitimacy of those national controls, particularly as they apply in the UK, in the light of general public law standards, bearing in mind that influences operate in both directions, not only between states but also between municipal legal standards and public international law.
Chapter
5. The Internationalization of Public Law and its Impact on the UK
David Feldman
Chapter
8. The Human Rights Act 1998 and the European Convention on Human Rights
This chapter looks at the Human Rights Act (HRA) 1998 and the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). It starts by defining human rights, which are normally expressed as obligations that the state has towards those living within it, and explains that the HRA puts the UK’s human rights obligation into practice in domestic law and international law. In addition, UK courts have used the HRA to identify the correct interpretation of ECHR rights when applied domestically. The chapter also considers the interpretation of sections 3 and 4 of the HRA in line with its underlying constitutional principles, and the HRA’s relationship with the notion of parliamentary sovereignty.
