Douglas Carswell's Blog

Why we must quit the jurisdication of this foreign court

If you want to know why we must quit the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights, read court president, Sir Nicolas Bratza trying to defend it.

Sir Nicolas writes as though it was this supranational quango from the 1950s that invented the notion of limited government.     

British lawyers, Sir Nicolas seeks to assure us, played a very major role in the development of the court’s role.  Perhaps. But what about the British people? 

Mere "governments of the day" and "popular opinion", must not, Sir Nicolas seems to suggest, be allowed to stand in the way of the superior wisdom of these legal technocrats.  I'm sure Abu Qatada would agree.  

Sir Nicolas seems to have reverted to the pre-modern idea that an elite must govern wisely from on high, accountable not to the people, but to their own consciences to tell them what is right. 

In defence of his court, Sir Nicolas cites several cases where the judges have clearly made rulings most reasonable folk would believe to be right.  No one disputes this. Even a broken clock gets the time right twice a day.

The issue is not whether every ruling by the Human Rights Euro court is right. Rather it is whether this supranational quango has the right to be making these decisions in the first place.

If Sir Nicolas thinks the public policy priorities that the court imposes are so self-evidently good, he should run for election to Parliament the way I did. 

The ECHR has expanded far beyond what was intended.  Instead of safe guarding democratic values against tyranny, the court today facilitates a form of judicial activism that undermines democracy.  The price we pay for judicial activism is public policy sclerosis as successive governments are unable to develop new approaches to dealing with terror suspects or the mass movement of people. We are left applying late twentieth century solutions to twenty first century problems. 

The digital revolution means more and more decisions can be taken closer to citizens. Leaving it to remote grandees to decide things is becoming increasingly difficult to defend.  As Sir Nicolas' article inadvertently shows.

Back to all posts