European Court of Human Rights, Hirst vs United Kingdom (No. 2) [2005] ECHR 74025/01 - The mechanism to promote judicial and national dialogue

Extract

[...] European Court of Human Rights, Hirst vs United Kingdom (No. [2005] ECHR 74025/01 - The mechanism to promote judicial and national dialogue Introduction: In Hirst v United Kingdom, the country faced the European Court of Human Rights' limitation concerning the restriction of prisoners' rights. Indeed, the institution affirmed that systematically banning their right to vote was a violation of Article 3 of the European Convention (ECHR) and was exceeding the states' "margin of appreciation" on the matter. The Court thus invited the United Kingdom to change its legislation, but the process was long, and the country showed reluctance to give effect to the judgment. [...]

[...] Hirst v UK, a British manifestation of the disruptive dialogue between the state and the European Court of Human Rights In this case, the interesting aspect of the dialogue lies not in the decision itself, but rather in its aftermath. Indeed, the judgment's enforcement was particularly long to be put in place and can even be considered as partially meeting the exigencies, showing a certain reluctance of the UK. In its dialogue with the European Court the State was often reprimanded: in Greens v UK the jurisdiction confirmed the unlawfulness of the blanket ban and imposed a time limit of 6 months for a British compliance to Hirst, before reaffirming once again the disproportionality of the systematic ban in Scoppola v Italy. [...]

[...] Indeed, the European Court affirmed 7 years after Hirst, and before the official compliance of the UK, that a prohibition could be tolerable in some circumstances. The question of proportionality of a blanket ban was in fact central in another case, however the European Court's opinion was different in Animal Defenders: the jurisdiction declared there was no violation of the Convention, the ban lied within the UK's margin of appreciation on the matter of broadcast medias. The prohibition was here declared proportional because seen as necessary to protect the public interest and democratic process, as well as being reviewed, debated and analysed in detail by political and judicial bodies to limit the infringement of freedom of speech. [...]

[...] A danger for both the UK and Europe" (2013), King's College Student Law Review T. Lewis, "Case Comment, "Difficult and slippery terrain": Hansard, human rights, and Hirst v UK" (2006), Nottingham Law school T. Lewis, "Animals Defenders International v UK: sensible dialogue or a bad case of Strasbourg jitters?" (2014), The Modern Law Review, Volume 77, Issue 3 A. [...]

[...] As a result, the UK did end up by complying to the European judgment, marking a change in the law and an improvement concerning prisoners' rights. The question was here to set a new framework for the State's margin of appreciation concerning these rights while preserving still the prisoners' fundamental freedoms: the blanket ban was enforcing generally an absolute rule and was disproportionate, but the jurisdiction maintained the idea of State's interpretation on the matter as long as "the margin of appreciation (was) wide (but) not all-embracing". [...]