Students' dream of a focal point for human rights law debate is realised

Published on Sunday 4 October 2009 20:59

EARLIER this year, a group of Edinburgh University law students chased after advocate Aidan O'Neill, QC, as he left a tutorial on human rights and begged him for help. The students were keen on developing a focal point for the discussion and debate of human rights law in Scotland after a successful campaign to have an elective in the subject added to the curriculum of their diploma course.

Some months later, the plaintive pursuit of Mr O'Neill has finally paid off, as the Scottish Human Rights Law Group celebrated its launch in the University's Playfair Library on Wednesday.

Top of the bill was Cherie Booth, QC, a noted speaker on human rights, wife of former prime minister Tony Blair, and a former colleague of Mr O'Neill's. She came to celebrate the achievement of the students in establishing a network of individuals interested in contributing to the debate on human rights law in Scotland.

That network now boasts more than 300 individuals, drawn from legal practice, academia, politics and campaigning, who are already contributing to the discourse on the group's website and plan to take part soon in a series of live events.

Speaking at the launch, Susan Reddy, a member of the group that chased down Mr O'Neill, and one of its seven-strong steering committee, said she was delighted the forum had come so far.

"The sheer number of people who have shown interest in our group spells out loudly and clearly the great need their is for a focus on human rights law in Scotland," she said.

"Before the group's existence, it seemed to us that human rights and those interested in it lacked a focal point. We are now convinced we do have a focal point which will continue far beyond this evening."

Mr O'Neill, himself an expert in human rights law, said he became involved because of a concern that human rights law was considered a marginal interest by practitioners in Scotland.

"My own experience in legal practice at the Bar has been instead that human rights considerations permeate the whole gamut of law and legal practice in Scotland," he said. "From family law to commercial arbitrations; from employment law to criminal procedure; from personal injuries cases to building disputes. Human rights law is not, then, some discrete compartmentalised area of law out on its own. To think of it as such – and worse yet to teach it as such – was, it seemed to me, to misunderstand and misrepresent the legal system that we now have in Scotland."

Mr O'Neill expressed hope that the group could gain input from a range of Scottish lawyers.

"Commercial as well as legal aid lawyers are welcome," he said. "Civil and criminal practitioners alike. Glasgow-based lawyers, as much as Edinburgh, Dundee, Aberdeen, Inverness; sheriffs and judges, as well as advocates and solicitors; government lawyers, just as much as those who specialise in taking the government to court.

"It was hoped, too, we would be able spread this network outside the immediate confines of lawyers in practice to bring in interested legal academics, teaching in every area of private law as much as public law, national as much as international law. We also want to encompass within this idea of a professional network people who are involved the advice and voluntary sectors, campaigning NGOs and quasi government agencies."

At the lectern, Ms Booth began proceedings portentously, warning that human rights as a concept was under attack from an "insidious campaign" to paint them in a negative light. She called on her audience to join the battle to "rehabilitate" the notion of human rights.

"This needs us to address the myths about human rights and to put them back where they should be – at the centre of all our lives," Ms Booth said.

Reminding the audience that human rights were not a new invention, she paid tribute to the Magna Carta and the Declaration of Arbroath, documents she said helped enshrine personal freedoms in the constitutional traditions of the UK.

And she pointed out that British lawyers had been at the forefront of developing the European Convention on Human Rights. It was therefore her contention that, rather than being "foisted" on an unwilling Britain, the Human Rights Act, passed by her husband's government in 1998, served merely to "bring home" the notion of human rights.

"Instead of our citizens having to take their case to Strasbourg, they can now do so in our courts before our judges," she said, before pointedly adding: "Something you might have thought would be welcomed by the anti-Europeans rather than criticised."

Bemoaning the fact human rights have become known as "the terrorist's friend", Ms Booth denied governments were now powerless to act in the face of new threats. "What human rights protections mean is they are required to show that the action it wishes to take is reasonable and for a legitimate purpose," she said. "The notion of human rights has become linked in the public imagination with rights for terrorists, or rights for criminals. In our sceptical consumer society, it seems the majority of people feel that human rights are not relevant to their lives. This is a profoundly worrying trend, and one to which lawyers, activists and legal educators must respond."

In its own way, the Scottish Human Rights Law Group has started that response.

&#149 The website of the Scottish Human Rights Law Group is at www.shrlg.org.uk