43 judgments interpreting, applying, or limiting the provisions of this Act. Sorted by court tier then reverse-chronologically.
When challenging benefits policy as discriminatory, you must show the Government's choice was obviously baseless. Judges defer heavily to ministers on welfare spending — even where lone parents with toddlers feel the brunt.
On Article 14 challenges to welfare measures (the revised benefit cap), the court applies a 'manifestly without reasonable foundation' test; difference of treatment based on the status of lone parents with young children was justified.
When police bungle the investigation of serious violent crime — like the black-cab rapist case — victims can sue them for breaching human rights. Both broken procedures and individual failings can ground a payout.
Damages awarded under s.8 against the police for breach of the Article 3 operational duty to conduct an effective investigation into the 'black-cab rapist' offences; affirms that systemic and operational failures may both ground HRA damages.
Cutting off bereavement support to unmarried parents with kids — but giving it to married widows — punished the children for their parents not having married. The court formally flagged the rule as unfair discrimination.
Denying widowed parent's allowance to long-term cohabiting partners with children was a disproportionate breach of Article 14 read with Article 8 (and A1P1); declaration of incompatibility issued.
Most judges thought NI's abortion ban breached human rights in rape, incest and fatal-disability cases — but only an actual victim can ask for a formal declaration. A general human-rights body bringing the case in the abstract wasn't enough.
Although a majority considered Northern Ireland's abortion law incompatible with Article 8 in cases of fatal foetal abnormality, rape and incest, no declaration was made because the NIHRC lacked standing under s.7 to seek one.
Letting only same-sex couples have civil partnerships discriminated against opposite-sex couples who didn't want to marry. The Government couldn't keep saying 'we'll get round to it' — the court formally flagged the law as incompatible.
Declaration of incompatibility issued in respect of the Civil Partnership Act 2004 confining civil partnerships to same-sex couples — breach of Article 14 read with Article 8; legislative timetable did not justify delay.
Even when private sexual details are already circulating online overseas, UK courts can still gag British newspapers — section 12 doesn't tilt the scales in favour of the press where privacy is at stake.
Section 12 does not enhance the weight of Article 10 over privacy; the Supreme Court continued an interim injunction restraining publication of private sexual information notwithstanding wide internet dissemination abroad.
Refusing student loans to a young migrant who'd grown up in Britain and was heading towards settlement was unfairly rigid. A blanket rule that ignores individual circumstances can amount to unlawful discrimination.
A blanket settlement requirement for student loans was a disproportionate interference with Article 14 read with Article 2 of Protocol 1 (education) for a long-resident migrant on a path to settlement.
When the Government interferes with rights like privacy, courts run a four-step check on whether it's justified — but they still give ministers extra room when foreign policy and national security are in the mix.
Sets out the modern four-stage proportionality test under Article 8 (and other qualified rights) and reaffirms that courts accord weight to the executive's foreign-policy and national-security assessments.
If the Parole Board takes too long to review a prisoner's case, the prisoner can get compensation — but only modest amounts in the low thousands, not the kind of damages you'd see for a serious injury.
Restates Greenfield: s.8 damages follow Strasbourg practice. Gives detailed guidance on quantum for delayed Parole Board reviews under Article 5(4), with awards in the range of a few thousand pounds.
Taking a child from its parents for adoption without their consent is the most drastic step the state can take with a family. It's only allowed where literally nothing else will do — and the courts must scrutinise that decision properly.
Article 8 requires that adoption without parental consent be a last resort — 'nothing else will do' — and the appellate court must review the lower court's proportionality assessment, not merely whether the judge was 'plainly wrong'.
British soldiers don't lose their right to life just because they're sent overseas. The Ministry of Defence must give them proper training and equipment, and explain itself if poor decisions get them killed.
Article 2 jurisdiction extends to British service personnel deployed abroad; the State owes substantive and procedural Article 2 duties in respect of training, equipment and operational planning where these create real and immediate risk to life.
UK courts shouldn't stretch human rights into new territory on their own initiative. If Strasbourg hasn't clearly recognised a right, our judges shouldn't be the first to invent it.
Restates the Ullah principle: it is not for UK courts to expand the reach of Convention rights beyond what is clearly established by Strasbourg, absent a clear line of authority.
Blocking all young foreign spouses from joining their British partners until age 21 — to deter forced marriages — punished genuine couples too. The blanket rule was a sledgehammer where a scalpel was needed.
Raising the minimum age for a spouse visa to 21 to combat forced marriage was a disproportionate interference with Article 8 family-life rights of those in genuine marriages.
You normally have one year to sue a public body for breaching your rights, but judges can extend that if it's fair. Being a bit late, on its own, won't usually sink a strong case.
On the one-year limitation period in s.7(5): the court should apply a structured equitable discretion, weighing the merits and the public-authority defendant's position; mere lateness without prejudice is rarely fatal.
UK judges normally follow settled Strasbourg rulings, but they don't have to swallow them whole — if a ruling clashes with something fundamental about how UK law works, they can push back.
Section 2 does not put UK courts in a 'strait-jacket': they will usually follow a clear and constant line of Strasbourg authority but are not bound to do so where it would be inconsistent with a fundamental substantive or procedural aspect of UK law.
Being on the sex offenders register for life with no chance to ever ask for a review was over the top. People can change, so they must at least get a chance to argue they no longer pose a risk.
Indefinite notification requirements under the Sexual Offences Act 2003 with no possibility of review were declared incompatible with Article 8 as disproportionate.
If the UK Supreme Court thinks the Strasbourg court has misunderstood how British courts actually work, it can refuse to follow that ruling and invite Strasbourg to think again — a respectful dialogue rather than blind obedience.
Where the Supreme Court is concerned that a Strasbourg decision insufficiently appreciates or accommodates particular aspects of domestic process, it may decline to follow it and give the Strasbourg court the opportunity to reconsider.
IPP prisoners stuck inside because the prison couldn't give them rehabilitation courses didn't automatically have a right to be freed. The link with their original sentence had to be completely broken before liberty kicked in.
Failure by the Secretary of State to provide rehabilitation courses to IPP prisoners did not by itself render their continued detention 'arbitrary' under Article 5(1)(a); the causal link between conviction and continued detention must be entirely broken before Article 5 is engaged.
In care cases — even where serious abuse is alleged — judges decide on the balance of probabilities, not 'beyond reasonable doubt'. A fair trial doesn't require a tougher standard just because the allegations are grave.
There is only one civil standard of proof — the balance of probabilities — applicable to determining the threshold criteria in care proceedings; Article 6 does not require a heightened standard for serious allegations.
When Strasbourg leaves room for countries to decide for themselves, UK courts must work out the right answer for the UK — and they can give people stronger protection than Strasbourg has required so far.
Where Strasbourg has left a question to the margin of appreciation of national authorities, UK courts must form their own view on the Convention point and may go further than the existing Strasbourg jurisprudence.
When a council paid a private care home to look after an elderly resident, the home wasn't bound by human-rights duties — leaving residents unprotected. Parliament had to step in and reverse this for care homes by statute.
A private care-home providing accommodation under contract to a local authority was held not to be exercising functions of a public nature under s.6(3)(b); decision later reversed by statute for residential care.
After Belmarsh, the Government had a fast-track way to fix the incompatible terror law. It chose new primary legislation instead, and the Lords later ruled that evidence obtained by torture abroad could never be used.
Following the Belmarsh declaration of incompatibility, the Government used the s.10 remedial-order route (via the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005) rather than primary legislation; the House addressed admissibility of evidence obtained by torture in the replacement scheme.
Compensation for human-rights breaches is modest — much lower than personal-injury payouts. Often, simply having a court declare the breach is treated as a remedy in itself, with no money on top.
Damages under s.8 are not to be awarded on common-law tort scales; courts must take into account the principles applied by the Strasbourg court under Article 41, which is normally restrained and frequently treats a finding of breach as itself sufficient just satisfaction.
Leaving asylum seekers starving on the street with nowhere to sleep crosses the line into inhuman treatment. The Government can't deny them all support just because they didn't apply for asylum the moment they arrived.
Section 55 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002, which denied support to asylum seekers who did not claim 'as soon as reasonably practicable', engaged Article 3 where it exposed them to imminent destitution amounting to inhuman or degrading treatment.
Courts must take religious freedom seriously, but it isn't a trump card. Parents who wanted Christian schools to cane their children couldn't override Parliament's ban — protecting children came first.
Section 13 requires particular regard to the importance of religious freedom but does not give Article 9 trump-card status; the statutory ban on corporal punishment in schools was a justified interference with the religious beliefs of Christian parents and teachers.
Even in a genuine national emergency, ministers can't suspend human rights with measures that go too far or only target foreigners. The court accepted the post-9/11 threat was real, but struck down the derogation as discriminatory overkill.
Reviewing the s.14 designated derogation order, the House accepted there was a public emergency threatening the life of the nation but quashed the order because the measures were disproportionate and discriminatory under Article 14.
If you want a court to gag the press before publication, you usually have to show you'd probably win at full trial. The bar is deliberately high — courts are wary of stopping stories from being published.
Section 12(3) means an applicant for interim relief restraining publication must normally show it is 'more likely than not' to succeed at trial; a flexible threshold permitting a lower standard only in exceptional cases.
Courts can stretch the words of an Act — even add or ignore words — to make it fit human rights, as long as that doesn't twist what the law was fundamentally trying to do. Here, an unmarried same-sex partner counted as 'spouse' for tenancy rights.
Section 3 permits a court to read words in or out of a statute to render it Convention-compatible, even where the reading departs from the unambiguous meaning of the language, provided it does not go against the grain of the legislation.
When someone dies in state custody or care, an inquest must explore not just how they physically died, but the wider circumstances — was the state at fault? Families have a right to those answers.
Article 2's procedural duty requires that an inquest must investigate not only by what means but also in what broad circumstances the deceased came by his death; the Coroners Rules must be read down under s.3 to comply.
When privacy clashes with press freedom, neither one wins automatically. Courts weigh the specific facts of each case: how serious the intrusion, how important the story, who's affected.
Section 12 reinforces the 'parallel analysis' of Articles 8 and 10: neither has presumptive precedence; the comparative importance of each right and proportionality must be assessed by an intense focus on the specific facts.
UK courts should mirror what the European human rights court in Strasbourg says — they shouldn't give people fewer rights than Strasbourg recognises, but they shouldn't invent extra ones either.
Lord Bingham's 'mirror principle': domestic courts should keep pace with Strasbourg jurisprudence, no more and no less. Foundational gloss on the s.2 duty to 'take into account' Convention case law.
Not every organisation has to obey human-rights duties. A local church council chasing homeowners for medieval church-repair bills was acting as a private landlord-equivalent, not as the state — so the homeowner couldn't use the Act against it.
Sets out the test for 'core' and 'hybrid' public authorities under s.6: a parochial church council is not a core public authority and its enforcement of chancel-repair liability is a private act outside the section's reach.
Judges flagged the rule blocking trans people from marrying in their acquired gender as a breach of human rights, but said only Parliament could redesign marriage law to fix it. The Gender Recognition Act 2004 followed.
A declaration of incompatibility was made in respect of s.11(c) Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 (no recognition of acquired gender for marriage); the issue was for Parliament, not s.3 reinterpretation.
Free speech doesn't include the right to put graphic images on prime-time TV. The BBC was entitled to refuse a party-election broadcast showing aborted foetuses, because broadcasters have legal duties about taste and decency.
The BBC's refusal to broadcast a party-election broadcast containing graphic abortion imagery was a justified Article 10 restriction in light of statutory taste and decency obligations.
You can't sue a minister for saying a Bill complied with human rights when it didn't — but what ministers said in Parliament about the Bill's aims can help judges later when they weigh whether the resulting law is justified.
Although s.19 statements of compatibility are not justiciable, Pepper v Hart-style use of Ministerial statements about compatibility may shed light on the policy aim of the legislation when courts assess proportionality.
Letting a politician decide how long a life prisoner must serve before parole isn't a fair trial — that's a judge's job. The courts couldn't fix this by interpretation, so they declared the law incompatible.
Declaration of incompatibility issued against the Home Secretary's role in setting tariffs for mandatory life prisoners as incompatible with Article 6; s.3 could not save the provision without judicial vandalism.
There's a limit to how far courts can stretch a law. Inventing a whole new court-supervision system for care plans went beyond interpretation and into rewriting — that's Parliament's job, not the judges'.
Section 3 cannot be used to introduce a starred-milestones regime into the Children Act 1989; the boundary between interpretation and amendment is crossed where the reading-in would depart substantially from a fundamental feature of the legislation.
Section 3 is a strong tool: even a rape-shield rule blocking sexual-history evidence had to be read flexibly, so that defendants could still get the fair trial human rights guarantees them.
Section 3 imposes an unusually strong interpretive obligation; the YJCEA 1999 s.41 could be read down to admit sexual-history evidence where exclusion would breach Article 6.
Being legally required to tell police who was driving your car doesn't breach your right to a fair trial. Fair-trial rights aren't absolute — they can be balanced against pressing public concerns like road safety.
Article 6 rights — including the privilege against self-incrimination — are not absolute; statutory compulsion to identify the driver of a vehicle under s.172 Road Traffic Act 1988 was a proportionate response to a pressing road-safety aim.
Big housing associations doing what councils used to do — taking public money, heavily regulated, providing social housing — count as public bodies when they evict tenants, so their tenants get human-rights protection.
A registered social landlord's management and termination of social housing tenancies are functions of a public nature for s.6(3)(b); the court applied a 'factor-based' approach focusing on public subsidy, regulation and the role played in providing social housing.
If a public authority drags you into court — even just to evict you — you can defend yourself using human rights. You don't need to launch your own separate claim; you can raise it as a shield in the proceedings you're already in.
Section 7(1)(b) lets a defendant rely on Convention rights in any 'legal proceedings' brought by a public authority, including statutory possession proceedings; the 'victim test' is satisfied where the act in question would affect the defendant.
If you're suing a public body for botched administration breaching your family-life rights, expect a small payout if any — and don't run up huge legal bills. The point isn't to bankrupt the state for everyday mistakes.
Damages under s.8 for maladministration breaches of Article 8 should be modest, awarded only where necessary for just satisfaction, and litigation costs should be proportionate; courts should not allow such claims to consume disproportionate public resources.
Where a housing association is essentially an arm of the council it took its homes from, evicting tenants is a public function — so tenants can rely on human-rights protections, not just ordinary tenancy law.
Early authority on s.6(3)(b): a housing association closely assimilated to the local authority transferring stock to it was a functional public authority when terminating tenancies; the act was not 'private' under s.6(5).