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Making Rights Real

Making Rights Real the Human Rights Act in its First Decade

Author: Ian Leigh; Roger Masterman
Publisher: Hart Publishing
ISBN: 9781841133539
Published In: August 2008
Format: Hardback , 264 pages
Jurisdiction: U.K. ? Disclaimer:
Countri(es) stated herein are used as reference only

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More than five years after the commencement of the Human Rights Act 1998, it is timely to evaluate the Act's effectiveness. The focus of Making Rights Real is on the extent to which the Act has delivered on the promise to 'bring rights home'. To that end the book considers how the judiciary, parliament and the executive have performed in the new roles that the Human Rights Act requires them to play and the courts' application of the Act in different legal spheres.

This account cuts through the rhetoric and controversy surrounding the Act, generated by its champions and detractors alike, to reach a measured assessment. The true impact in public law, civil law, criminal law and on anti-terrorism legislation are each considered. Finally, the book discusses whether we are now nearer to a new constitutional settlement and to the promised new 'rights culture'.

Ian Leigh and Roger Masterman are, respectively, Professor of Law and Lecturer in Law at Durham University. Both are members of the Durham Human Rights Centre.

The breadth of the project is the book's main strength. It provides an excellent one-stop-shop for those wishing to obtain a detailed overview and evaluation of the Act, of its impact upon English law, and of academic commentary…Leigh and Masterman succeed in their objective of providing an excellent account of the extent to which Convention rights have been brought home in the first decade of the Human Rights Act.
Alison Young
The Cambridge Law Journal
Vol 68 (2) July 2009

The writing is lucid. The authors are experienced and knowledgeable in the field, and while their work is scholarly, the text is not overburdened.
Gina Clayton
The Journal of Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Law
Vol 23, No 2, 2009

...[includes] a wide-ranging survey of the Act's effect on private law covering privacy, contract, employment and property law.
Elizabeth Prochaska
The Law Quarterly Review
Vol 125. April 2009

Making Rights Real should appeal to a range of audiences as it contains an accessible outline of the HRA and discusses the most important cases that have arisen in the subsequent jurisprudence, both of which will be illustrative for new students of human rights law in the UK, and yet it simultaneously manages to develop more scholarly ideas of constitutional reform that will be of interest in a more academic forum.
Hayley Smith
Justice Journal
Issue 5, Number 2