THW Scrap the Human Rights Act
Paedophiles being allowed to go to school gyms. Gypsies being able to roam the Green belt. A criminal suspect entitled to fried chicken during a police siege. These are the sort of cases that get on the nerve of Daily Mail readers up and down the land, and make the abolition of the Human Rights Act the clarion call of that paper. So, by convention, libertarians should probably oppose such a ridiculous motion.
However, in this case, it would be fundamentally wrong to do so. The Human Rights Act is an absurdity, and a crackpot case of legalese nonsense. It rambles on for eleven thousand words, carefully defining what institutions may be bound by it, what the uncontroversial words mean, and what clauses trump other clauses. Then, it proceeds to neuter itself by couching all the terms in big qualifications. Apparently, we have the freedom of expression except:
such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of … territorial integrity … for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence…
Territorial integrity? So if the government bans us supporting an independent Norfolk, that’s fine. Protection of morals? So it’s OK for the government to prohibit ‘blasphemy’. Protection of reputation of others? So the government could pass a law banning talking about financial news. Except the government’s own BBC’s Robert Peston would probably do it anyway.
As such, the Human Rights Act manages, somehow, to contain neither the majesty nor the simplicity nor the unequivocality of the United States Bill of Rights: which is one-twentieth as long. That document would make a fine blueprint for a replacement, with a few changes, of course. Scratch out the part in the Fifth Amendment that gave rise to the madness of Kelo v New London. Explicitly state that capital punishment is cruel and unusual under the Eight Amendment. Remove the part in Article 1(8) of the Constitution itself that allows the government to levy taxes for the ‘general welfare’ (i.e. whatever it wants). Extend the entire document to cover every layer of government, every one of its tentacles. That, I think, would just about do it.
All of this would need to be codified, enshrined, and entrenched. It would need to be, as Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights were once considered, fundamentally unchangeable documents that reveal the nature of freedom, and which limit the role of government to that which furthers it. Instead, we have a bastardised version that protects no rights, and takes away many.
The motion was debated at UCL Debating Society on 26 January 2008. The motion was foolishly defined such that the Human Rights Act would not be replaced by any Bill of Rights “and to hell with the childish concept of tyranny of the majority”. It was, naturally, consequently defeated by a three-to-one margin.
