Overview

What are the connections between conceptions of rights found in English law and those found in bills of rights around the World? How has English Common Law influenced the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) 1948 and the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) 1950? These questions and more are answered in Michael Tugendhat's historical account of human rights from the eighteenth century to present day. Focusing specifically on the first modern declarations of the rights of mankind- the 'Virginian Declaration of Rights', 1776, the French 'Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen', 1789, and the 'United States Bill of Rights', 1791- the book recognises that the human rights documented in these declarations of the eighteenth century were already enshrined in English common law, many originating from English law and politics of the fifteenth century. The influence of English Common Law , taken largely from Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England, can also be realised in the British revolutions of 1642 and 1688; the American and French Revolutions of 1776 and 1789 respectively; and through them, on the UDHR and ECHR. Moreover, Tugendhat argues that British law, in all but a few instances, either meets or exceeds human rights standards, and thus demonstrates that human rights law is British law and not a recent invention imported from abroad. Structured in three sections, this volume (I) provides a brief history of human rights; (II) examines the rights found in the American and French declarations and demonstrates their ancestry with English law; and (III) discusses the functions of rights and how they have been, and are, put to use.

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9780198790990

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Liberty Intact is a timely reminder of the capacity of the common law to provide robust, influential and context appropriate protection of fundamental rights in the United Kingdom, and its ability to do so in a self-sufficient and coherent manner... Certainly, everyone, whether lawyer or non-lawyer, should read it. Lord Neuberger, President of the Supreme Court

Author Information

Sir Michael Tugendhat was a Judge of the High Court of England and Wales from 2003 to June 2014. He was a scholar at Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge where he graduated in Classics and Philosophy. In 1967-8 he held a Henry Fellowship at Yale University. He practised at the English Bar from 1970 to 2003 specialising in media and commercial law. He was a judge of the Courts of Appeal of Jersey and Guernsey, and was the Judge in Charge of the High Court's Queen's Bench Division civil lists. As a barrister and a judge he was involved in many of the cases in which the law of freedom of expression and privacy were developed in the light of human rights.

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