Human Rights Law Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Human Rights Law - Essay Example Human rights tend to be a very modern concept that primarily evolved after the World War II, in the aftermath of the gargantuan genocides and atrocities marking the Holocaust, leading to the adoption of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations at Paris in the year 1948. Hence the development of the European notion of human rights is a very recent phenomenon, unfolding after the secularization of Judeo-Christian ethics, which is still being extended legal and political legitimacy through relevant legal and statutory instruments. In that context, the English human rights law has evolved from the potent traditions pertaining to liberty and freedom existing in the English law and conventions as well as the apt developments taking place in a pan-European scenario.3 The UK law pertaining to human rights owes much to the European Convention of Human Rights. ... The primary objective that these classifications tend to achieve is to assure that under no circumstances a person is deprived of one’s liberty in a manner that is arbitrary.5 The quintessential spirit of Article 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights is to safeguard the individuals from such actions of the state that may be deemed to be unlawful and unexplainable. Yet, in the same breath, Article 5 tends to acknowledge that the scope of liberty could not be extended to the limits of absolute.6 Thus, in the remaining part, Article 5 attempts to enumerate the conditions and circumstances that justify the lawful restraints on the liberty of a person. Yet, each of the exceptions mentioned in Article 5 are subject to accruing legitimacy on the existence of reviews by the independent bodies of opinion. Hence, it is in totality, when one observes these twin ramifications of Article 5 that one could not help acknowledging the possibility of violations arising from faulty or int entional interpretations and applications of Article 5. The Human Rights Act 1998 of the United Kingdom was a direct initiation of the spirit for human dignity and liberty ushered in by the European Convention for Human Rights at a local level.7 The Human Rights Act 1998 came into application and force in the year 2000. The very purpose of this Act was to infiltrate in to the British Law, the rights upheld and supported by the European Convention on Human Rights. This Act lay to rest the requirement for approaching the European Court of Human Rights located at Strasbourg, by extending a remedy for the violation of Convention Rights, within the United Kingdom law. This Act makes it unlawful for a public body in the United Kingdom to act