What is a bill of rights and does the UK have one?

Seminar Series: Constitutional Law

In recent times, discussion of a UK bill of rights to replace the Human Rights Act has been overtaken by Brexit. However, given the vacuum in national human rights protection about to occur as a direct result of Brexit, now is the time to focus on strengthening the protection of human rights through law at the national level. In this seminar, utilising relevant scholarship and previous reports and debates focussing on the UK context, Merris Amos will establish a set of purposes any “ideal” bill of rights should be directed towards fulfilling. This framework will then be applied to the Human Rights Act to determine if it can fulfil all the purposes of a bill of rights and whether or not it is fit to address key contemporary challenges such as rising inequality and the UK’s departure from the European Union.

Speaker: Professor Merris Amos, Department of Law, Queen Mary University of London