Human rights and religion in the UK: a note for the Human Rights in Action project

Paul Johnson and Silvia Falcetta, of York University’s Sociology Department, have launched the Human Rights in Action project with a view to submitting evidence to the Independent Human Rights Act Review. This was written for the HRiA blog, and is cross-posted with permission.

Religion, the Human Rights Act 1998 and Article 9 ECHR

Largely as a result of the Human Rights Act 1998 making the European Convention on Human Rights directly justiciable in the domestic courts, the past twenty years have seen a decisive shift from a freedom-based approach to what one may or may not do to a rights-based approach – not least because, as Sir Henry Brooke suggested in a speech in September 2000, “our freedom-based laws haven’t always proved very successful in protecting the rights of unpopular minorities”. Continue reading