WHOLE LIFE ORDERS: ARTICLE 3 COMPLIANT AFTER ALL

2017 ◽  
Vol 76 (2) ◽  
pp. 230-233
Author(s):  
Jonathan Bild
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Secretary Of State ◽  
European Court ◽  
Life Sentence ◽  
Domestic Courts ◽  
Family Home ◽  
Grand Chamber ◽  
Release From Prison

The exercise of the Secretary of State's power to release from prison a murderer sentenced to a whole life order would be controversial and politically fraught. The Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights’ (“ECtHR”) succinct summary of the offending leading to the whole life order imposed on the applicant in Hutchinson v United Kingdom (57592/08), Judgment of 17 January 2017, demonstrates quite why a Secretary of State would find exercising their compassionate release powers so politically unpalatable: “In October 1983, the applicant broke into a family home, where he stabbed to death a man, his wife and their adult son. He then repeatedly raped their 18-year-old daughter, having first dragged her past her father's body” (at [10]). Yet the power to release life sentence prisoners on compassionate grounds under s. 30 of the Crime (Sentences) Act 1997 has become the fig leaf covering a more fundamental disagreement between the domestic courts and the ECtHR: whether it is possible to commit offences of such gravity that, for the purposes of retribution and deterrence, a person must forfeit their right to liberty for the duration of their life.

Hirst v United Kingdom [2005] ECHR 681, European Court of Human Rights (Grand Chamber)

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas E. Webb
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
Public Law ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
European Court ◽  
Grand Chamber

Essential Cases: Public Law provides a bridge between course textbooks and key case judgments. This case document summarizes the facts and decision in Hirst v United Kingdom [2005] ECHR 681, European Court of Human Rights (Grand Chamber). This note concerns the provisions limiting the voting rights of prisoners, and the extent to which the United Kingdom is bound to follow the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights. The document also includes supporting commentary from author Thomas Webb.

Overruling ‘the Salduz Doctrine’ in Beuze v Belgium: The ECtHR’s further retreat from the Salduz principles on the right to access to lawyer

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 342-362
Author(s):  
Ergul Celiksoy
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Case Law ◽  
European Convention ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
European Court ◽  
Increasing Trend ◽  
Grand Chamber ◽  
The Right ◽  
Right Of Access

In November 2018, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights delivered its judgment in the case of Beuze v Belgium. Relying on Ibrahim and Others v the United Kingdom, the Grand Chamber held that the Salduz principles require a two-stage test of analysis, and hence, ruled out that systematic statutory restriction of a general and mandatory nature would in itself constitute an automatic violation of Article 6 § 3(c) of the European Convention on Human Rights. However, the Beuze judgment appears to be very controversial, since the Grand Chamber failed to put forward any convincing reason why it departed from previous case law, particularly Dayanan v Turkey and other judgments against Turkey. In their separate opinion, the concurring Judges in Beuze were concerned that the Beuze judgment overruled ‘ Salduz itself and all other cases that have applied the Salduz test’, and thus, ‘actually distorts and changes the Salduz principle and devalues the right that the Court established previously’. This article analyses the Beuze judgment in the light of the Court’s recent jurisprudence in order to examine whether it contradicts and dilutes the principles previously set out. Further, it discusses the implications of the new standards established in Ibrahim and Others and in subsequent cases, particularly Beuze. Particular attention is paid to the questions of how ‘fair’ is the application of overall fairness assessment in every case, how may the Court’s changing direction of approach concerning the right to access to a lawyer affect the increasing trend of recognition thereof, as a rule, by the contracting states, and finally, to what extent the new principles, especially those established in Beuze, comply with Directive 2013/48/EU on the right of access to a lawyer.

The ‘Common European Approach', ‘International Trends', and the Evolution of Human Rights Law. A Comment on Goodwin and I v. the United Kingdom

2002 ◽  
Vol 3 (8) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Morawa
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
European Approach ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
International Trends ◽  
European Court ◽  
Opposite Sex ◽  
Grand Chamber ◽  
Male To Female

On 11 July 2002, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (Eur. Ct. H.R.) ruled unanimously in the cases of Goodwin and I v. the United Kingdom that the failure of British law to recognize gender re-assignment and to permit male to female transsexuals to marry persons of their newly opposite sex violated the applicants’ right to privacy (Article 8 ECHR) and to marry (Article 12). These two cases, apart from constituting an explicit deviation from previous constant jurisprudence, gave the Court (sitting as a Grand Chamber) an opportunity to creatively apply its longstanding interpretative principles, including the search for a ‘common European approach’ – now increasingly an ‘international trend’ –, in order to evolve human rights law. The following observations will focus on this aspect, while paying due attention to the other implications of the present cases. Finally, the two cases will be placed in the context of the current jurisprudence of the Court which, unfortunately, does not show a consistent tendency to progressively advance human rights law.

Free Life after Life Imprisonment as a Human Right under the European Convention: European Court of Human Rights, Grand Chamber, Judgment of 9 July 2013, Vinter and Others v. The United Kingdom

2013 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 501-512 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marek Szydło
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
National Court ◽  
European Convention ◽  
Human Right ◽  
National Courts ◽  
European Court ◽  
Life Sentence ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Grand Chamber ◽  
Life Sentences

The recent judgment of the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (‘the ECtHR’ or ‘the Court’) in Vinter and Others reflects a very significant change in the Court's attitude to those actions of the states parties to the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (‘the Convention’ or ‘the ECHR’) that consist in the imposition and further execution of whole life sentences. In this judgment, the Court concluded that Article 3 of the Convention – which prohibits torture, inhuman or degrading punishment – requires the reducibility of all whole life sentences as imposed by national courts, in the sense of a review mechanism which allows domestic authorities to conclude whether in the course of a life sentence the legitimate peno-logical grounds justifying the further incarceration of a life prisoner still exist. Moreover, such a mechanism or possibility for review of a whole life sentence must be provided for by a national law and, consequently, must be known to a life prisoner already at the moment of imposition of the whole life sentence. What is also important, a life prisoner, at the outset of his/her sentence, must know when (i.e. after how many years) and under what conditions a review of his/her sentence will take place or may be sought, and what he/she must do to be considered for release. Otherwise, the very imposition of a life sentence by a national court infringes Article 3 of the Convention.

Hirst v United Kingdom [2005] ECHR 681, European Court of Human Rights (Grand Chamber)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas E. Webb
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
Public Law ◽  
Case Note ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
European Court ◽  
Grand Chamber

Essential Cases: Public Law provides a bridge between course textbooks and key case judgments. This case document summarizes the facts and decision in Hirst v United Kingdom [2005] ECHR 681, European Court of Human Rights (Grand Chamber). This case note concerns the provisions limiting the voting rights of prisoners, and the extent to which the United Kingdom is bound to follow the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights. The document also includes supporting commentary from author Thomas Webb.

Life Meaning Life: Is There Any Hope of Release for Prisoners Serving Whole Life Orders?

2011 ◽  
Vol 75 (1) ◽  
pp. 70-87 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seema Kandelia
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
European Convention ◽  
Life Meaning ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
European Court ◽  
Life Sentence ◽  
Domestic Courts ◽  
Degrading Treatment

This article reviews the system of whole life orders in England and Wales, looking in particular at whether such sentences constitute inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment contrary to Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights. This issue came before the European Court of Human Rights in 2008 in the case of Kafkaris v Cyprus. The court held that a whole life tariff would not violate Article 3 as long as there was some possibility that a life sentence was de jure or de facto reducible. The possible grounds for the release of a prisoner serving a whole life sentence in England and Wales is, however, extremely limited. This article will assess to what extent the release procedures regarding whole lifers meet the criteria laid down by the European and domestic courts and whether there is any realistic hope of release for prisoners sentenced to whole life orders.

Al-Skeini v. United Kingdom

2012 ◽  
Vol 106 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-137 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miša Zgonec-Rožej
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
European Convention ◽  
Effective Control ◽  
Right To Life ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
European Court ◽  
Protection Of Human Rights ◽  
Grand Chamber ◽  
The Right

In Al-Skeini v. United Kingdom, decided on July 7, 2011, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg (the Court) found that the human rights obligations of the United Kingdom applied to its actions in Iraq and that the United Kingdom had violated Article 2 (right to life) of the European Convention on the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (Convention or ECHR) by failing to investigate the circumstances of the deaths of the relatives of five of the six applicants. The case deals with the extraterritorial application in Iraq of the Convention, which is part of UK domestic law by virtue of the Human Rights Act, 1998, and involves the concepts of jurisdiction, effective control, and the scope of the right to life.

WHOLE-LIFE SENTENCES IN THE UK: VOLTE-FACE AT THE EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS?

2015 ◽  
Vol 74 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-208
Author(s):  
Naomi Hart
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Fourth Section ◽  
European Court ◽  
Life Sentence ◽  
Degrading Treatment ◽  
Review Mechanism ◽  
English Law ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Life Sentences

THE ECtHR has for the second time in three years engaged with the British Government's handling of whole-life prison terms. In Hutchinson v United Kingdom (Application no. 57592/08), Judgment of 3 February 2015, not yet reported, the Fourth Section accepted the authoritativeness of an English court's decision on the meaning of English law relating to the Home Secretary's discretion to reduce a whole-life sentence. It also yielded to national judges on whether this sentence review mechanism complies with the proscription on inhuman and degrading treatment in Article 3 of the ECHR.

Hirst v United Kingdom [2005] ECHR 681, European Court of Human Rights (Grand Chamber)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas E. Webb
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
Public Law ◽  
Case Note ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
European Court ◽  
Grand Chamber

Essential Cases: Public Law provides a bridge between course textbooks and key case judgments. This case document summarizes the facts and decision in Hirst v United Kingdom [2005] ECHR 681, European Court of Human Rights (Grand Chamber). This case note concerns the provisions limiting the voting rights of prisoners, and the extent to which the United Kingdom is bound to follow the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights. The document also includes supporting commentary from author Thomas Webb.

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