Magna Carta and the invention of ‘British Rights’
Farrell, Michelle Hughes, Edel
Farrell, Michelle
Hughes, Edel
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2019
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book part
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Farrell, Michelle, & Hughes, and Edel. (2019). Magna Carta and the invention of ‘British Rights. In Michelle Farrell, Eleanor Drywood, & Edel Hughes (Eds.), Human rights in the media: Fear and fetish. Oxon, United Kingdom: Routledge.
Abstract
Antipathy towards human rights, so evident in media coverage in the United Kingdom, revolves around the Human Rights Act 1998. As contributors to this volume have pointed out,2 the Human Rights Act is ‘hated’ and described as, amongst other things, ‘insidious’,3 a ‘criminal’s charter’,4 and, delightfully, the ‘human wrongs act’.5 Yet it is also commended, even fetishized as a ‘direct descendant of that great Charter’,6 as inaugurating ‘a human rights culture’,7 and as the root and branch of a ‘human rights revolution’.8 That the Act and the broader human rights ‘project’ is the subject of so much media commentary, both derisory and celebratory, perhaps arises in part from the UK’s curious constitutional arrangements, which meant that, until the enactment of the Act, ‘rights’ were conceived of as residual liberties protected, for the most part, through the common law.9 The UK has never had a constitutional ‘bill of rights’.
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Routledge
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Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International