In a searing rejoinder to #JonathanSumption’s recent Spectator article on leaving the #ECHR, #StuartWallace (@echrhawk) clears up some popular misunderstandings. @Con_Soc

In a searing rejoinder to Jonathan Sumption’s recent Spectator article on leaving the ECHR, Stuart Wallace (@echrhawk) clears up some popular misunderstandings. Read it now at:

“Former supreme court judge Jonathan Sumption recently wrote a piece for the Spectator entitled, somewhat dramatically, “Judgment call: the case for leaving the ECHR”. In the piece, Sumption makes a series of points concerning the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), which warrant further scrutiny.

At the outset of the article, Sumption appears to discount the necessity of the Convention claiming “Many of the rights which the convention proclaims were part of British law long before the convention was conceived”. This could be referred to as the “teaching grandmother to suck eggs” argument. Yet the notion that the UK had comparable rights protection in the common law to what is contained in the European Convention on Human Rights has been repeatedly debunked. Perhaps most notably in an excoriating article by Conor Geary in 2015 in which he observes that an array of cases were brought to Strasbourg against the UK which “went unnoticed by the common law’s supposed celebration of individual rights”. These included the maltreatment of homosexuals purely on account of their sexual orientation (Dudgeon v UK); corporal punishment in schools (Tyrer v UK); the inhuman and degrading treatment of internees (Ireland v UK); the deliberate shooting of suspected terrorists (countless examples notably McCann v UK) and Gearty’s list continues for some time after this. History has shown us time and again that significant blindspots exist within the UK’s legal system, neither addressed by common law rights protections nor, apparently, of concern to the vaunted democratic institutions of this state Sumption claims as the champions of rights protection. ”

Read more https://consoc.org.uk/case-adjourned-a-response-to-jonathan-sumption/