The human rights cases absolutely everyone should know about

This was my attempt to answer Adam Wagner’s request for a list of the fifty human rights cases absolutely everyone should know about. Inspiration failed me after No 16. And there’s only one overtly “religious” case on the list: I ignored Eweida & Ors v UK [2013] ECHR 37 on the grounds that all it did was to offer a fairly minor relaxation to the “specific situation” rule.

The notes are bite-sized to comply with Adam’s 50-word limit. And umpteen important ECtHR cases were excluded from consideration because they didn’t involve the UK. On reflection, they mostly seem to be about sex and violence…

  1. Ridge v Baldwin [1963] UKHL 2: When the Brighton Watch Committee dismissed its Chief Constable without a proper hearing it had violated natural justice. The Lords overturned the principle that the doctrine of natural justice could not be applied to administrative decisions. The case helped lay the foundations for the modern law of judicial review.

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