Michael Zander QC reports on how well the UK responds to human rights’ judgments
In July, the coalition government published its response to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights’ report Enhancing Parliament’s role in relation to human rights’ judgments. Both reports focused on judgments of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and on declarations of incompatibility issued by domestic courts under the Human Rights Act. The joint committee’s report reviewed the overall position, dealt in detail with individual cases, and made recommendations for systemic improvements.
ECtHR overwhelmed
Both publications start with the crisis facing the Strasbourg Court. Currently it has 120,000 pending cases and since there are many more new cases each year than are decided, the backlog is growing. Some 70% of the cases (mainly from East European countries) are “repetitive applications” where the national system has failed to deal with an issue that the court has already decided. At the end of 2009 there were 8,600 cases pending before the Committee of Ministers concerning late or non-execution of judgments.
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