The United Kingdom is a good place in which to assemble a book of sceptical essays about human rights, but was 2001 a good year in which to do it? True, by then Scotland and Wales had operative devolution statutes which obliged their Governments to observe the European Convention on Human Rights in all they did; and some interesting decisions had already been thrown up north of the border. But the big one, the UK's Human Rights Act, although enacted in 1998, had been put on a slow fuse to enable the country to get ready for it, and it was not until October 2000 that it was brought into force.

LRB 19 September 2002 | PDF Download