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Britain

Britain's Conservatives plan US-style bill of rights

2006-06-27

LONDON: Britain should replace the Human Rights Act with its first modern US-style bill of rights to help fight crime and terrorism, opposition Conservative Party leader David Cameron said on Monday. The rights act must go, he believes, because it has created a "culture of rights without responsibilities".

"It has hampered the fight against crime, it has caused some extra difficulties in the vital fight against terrorism," he told BBC radio. "It hasn't actually been particularly good at protecting our rights."

The proposals would strike a "common sense balance" between civil liberties and protecting public safety." Britain's human rights laws incorporated the European Convention of Human Rights into British law in 2000. Critics say it has tipped the balance in favour of criminals.

Cameron, who has overtaken Prime Minister Tony Blair in polls after losing the last election in May 2005, admitted it would be difficult to draw up a bill of rights. He will set up a panel of lawyers and constitutional experts to look at the issue. Under his proposals, Britain would remain a member of the European Convention on Human Rights and British citizens could still pursue cases at the European Court of Human Rights. Attorney General Lord Goldsmith, the government's top legal adviser, said Cameron's ideas were misconceived and dangerous.

Posted by:Fred

#7 Don't know if the Brits are ready for the second amendment. Though the right to defend yourself with a pointy stick would be an improvement. Strike that - just having the right to defend yourself would be an improvement.

Posted by: DMFD 2006-06-27 19:18

#6 The western world will remain disarmed until the pro-gun lobby adopts the same tactic as the anti-gun lobby: incrementalism.

This means not just opposing gun restrictions, but actively campaigning for gun freedoms. Continually pushing for the rights of the citizenry to have more and better means to defend themselves. Chipping away at the restrictions, at anti-gun legislation, at anti-gun education, at anti-gun cultural bigotry.

Every win just means that a new gun freedom needs advocacy. Children must be taught that a gun is their right and responsibility as an adult. That if for no other reason, because they are the ultimate and final defenders of the law. The citizenry, not the police.

Posted by: Anonymoose 2006-06-27 18:26

#5 Don't forget the Second Amendment, guys.

If you want your country to survive, as least....

Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2006-06-27 14:25

#4 And, I hope the right to bear arms (or arm bears for that matter) are among the tops there. Nothing else means anything if the citizen can not defend himself against ALL enemies, foreign & domestic.

Posted by: BA 2006-06-27 12:47

#3 Didn't the Founding Fathers have something to say about those who would trade freedom for security deserve NEITHER? And, weren't they mostly from england? While I back them (if specifically tied to the WoT), it always gives me the heebie-jeebies when some bureaucrat tries to "write rights" into a document. That's why I prefer the old way of "Those powers not EXPRESSLY presented here either fall to the State (as opposed to Federal) or to the individual."

Posted by: BA 2006-06-27 12:46

#2 It is very instructive for a European to read the declaration of Independence because it is not merely a declaration of rights for the citizen but also a declaration of duties for the state (allowing the people to exert the unalienable rights of life, freedom and pursuit of happiness) and that when it doesn't assume those duties, the state has no longer a right to exist.

This is completely absent from the Constitutions and Declarations of Human Rights in Europe. In fact, the French Declaration of Human Rights explicitly states in one of its very first articles (third or fourth) that the citizen must submit when authorities try to arrest him, and that not submitting makes him guilty (in my reading this includes the mere act of fleeing). Ie the outlawing of resistance to arrest is not a mere law aimed like in the USA but in a document who is in fact above the Constitution itself and the goals are different: protecting police officers in the USA versus keeping the citizens submissive towards the state.

Posted by: JFM 2006-06-27 11:03

#1 This idea should be terribly frightening to the Eurocrats. It would bring back the English Common Law that they have been trying to erase, while putting Britain under the continent's Napoleonic Law.

A Bill of Rights implies that those rights come directly from either God or evolve naturally to mankind--that they are NOT just granted by the state. This flies in the face of Napoleonic Law, whose guiding principle is that what the state does not expressly permit is forbidden.

If the British conservatives try to push this through, it will be opposed by every force Brussels and the Europhiles can generate.

They conservatives only proposed it because it seemed right in Common Law, and it is. But they probably don't know just how right it is.

Posted by: Anonymoose 2006-06-27 09:54

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