When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

Through the Looking-Glass, Chapter 2

The ECHR: “whatever it takes”?

The biggest legal news of the week was almost certainly the judgment of the Supreme Court in R (AAA (Syria) & Ors) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2023] UKSC 42, in which the Court held unanimously that the Secretary of State’s policy of sending asylum-seekers to Rwanda was unlawful. One critical issue was that under section 6 of the Human Rights Act 1998, it is unlawful for a public authority to act in a way that is incompatible with a right under the ECHR – and the Secretary of State is a public authority for that purpose. Further, section 2 requires the domestic courts to take account of the judgments of the ECtHR when determining a question that has arisen in connection with a Convention right: Continue reading →