ECtHR

Terrorism and free speech: the criminal law and the Convention

17 March 2026 by Guest Contributor

By Samuel Talalay

Introduction

Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (“ECHR” or “the Convention”) provides qualified protection for speech. Section 12(1A) of the Terrorism Act 2000 (“the 2000 Act”) criminalises certain speech acts relating to proscribed organisations. In the case of R v ABJ; R v BDN [2026] UKSC 8 the Supreme Court was asked to decide whether these two things could be reconciled: is s 12(1A) of the 2000 Act compatible with the Convention?

In its judgment, given on 26 February 2026, the Court answered this question with an unequivocal ‘yes’. The offence introduced by s 12(1A) was prescribed by law and necessary in a democratic society. Crucially, conviction would always represent a proportionate interference with the defendant’s Article 10 right to free speech where the elements of the offence, properly understood, were made out.

In providing such a resounding answer, however, the Court risks setting the bar too high for legislative provisions to be compatible with the Convention.

Medmoune v France: To Live and Let Die

5 March 2026 by Guest Contributor

By Kian Leong Tan

INTRODUCTION

In Medmoune v France App no 55026/22 (ECHR, 5 February 2026), the Fifth Section of the European Court of Human Rights considered the extent of a Member State’s obligation under Art. 2 ECHR (the right to life) when deciding to withdraw life support, in circumstances where the patient had explicitly asked for it to be continued.[1] The judgment helpfully illustrates the contentious boundary at which informed patient consent must give way to the expert opinion of medical professionals.

Family life and extraterritorial jurisdiction: IA & Ors v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2025] EWCA Civ 1516 

10 December 2025 by Guest Contributor

By Samuel Talalay

Introduction 

Hora v the United Kingdom: Strasbourg’s New Ruling on UK’s Prisoner Voting Ban

1 October 2025 by Guest Contributor

By Lewis Graham

In 2005, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights handed down its landmark decision in Hirst v the United Kingdom, finding that the effect of section 3 of the Representation of the People Act 1983, bringing into effect a blanket ban on the ability of prisoners in the UK to vote in elections, constituted a breach of Article 3 of Protocol 1 of the Convention (the right to free elections).

To say the case was controversial is an understatement, with the judgment becoming something of a bête noire for Strasbourg sceptics. Murray suggests that the judgment was pivotal in the “monstering” of the European Court. It is often presented as a case which epitomises Strasbourg overreach, taking the number 1 spot in the Judicial Power Project’s buffet of unfavourable, “problematic” legal cases. David Cameron, of course, famously remarked that the idea of complying with the judgment and giving (some) prisoners the vote made him feel “physically sick”.

Reliance on Article 8 in course of conduct of isolating children as disciplinary measure

25 August 2025 by Alice Kuzmenko

EBB and others v The Gorse Academies Trust [2025] EWHC 1983 (Admin)

In EBB and others v The Gorse Academies Trust [2025] EWHC 1983 (Admin), the Honourable Mrs Justice Collins Rice gave judgment in a multi-faceted, rolled-up permission and judicial review hearing concerning three high school students’ experiences of being disciplined within their school (“the School”).

Paterson v UK: Parliament and Human Rights in Strasbourg

8 October 2024 by Paula Kelly

The name ‘Chris Pincher’ has become synonymous with Boris Johnson’s downfall, but it was the case of Owen Paterson that precipitated the unrest in the Conservative Party that ultimately led to the former Prime Minister’s resignation.

Owen Paterson stepped down as an MP in November 2021, following a report by the House of Commons Select Committee on Standards that found he had breached the MPs’ Code of Conduct by engaging in paid advocacy and recommended that he be suspended from the House for thirty sitting days. After initially whipping MPs in an attempt to support Mr Paterson and to avoid a possible by-election in North Shropshire, Boris Johnson eventually conceded that the parliamentary party was not with him. Mr Paterson resigned before MPs could vote on the sanction.

The European Court of Human Rights (‘ECtHR’) has dismissed a complaint by Mr Paterson (Patterson v UK App no. 23570 (ECtHR, 19 September 2024)) that the proceedings and/or the finding breached his rights under Article 8 of the Convention to respect for his private and family life.  

The Good Friday Agreement and the European Convention on Human Rights

29 August 2023 by anuragdeb

Introduction

On 11 August, a piece from Professor Richard Ekins KC (Hon) set out a case for the UK denouncing the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and leaving the treaty system altogether. One of the main arguments in favour of this is that it would ‘restore Parliament’s freedom, on behalf of the British people, to decide what our laws should be’. This marks one of the more recent such calls, amid a growing chorus of Ministers in the UK Government and Conservative Party MPs to leave the ECHR. Also, it should be noted that we have been here before. The constitutional aspects of such a move aside, there are particular reasons why it would impact Northern Ireland. While Northern Ireland does not feature in Professor Ekins’ 11 August piece, he has previously written about the interaction between the ECHR and the Good Friday Agreement 1998 (GFA), which underpins the modern devolution settlement in Northern Ireland and which brought an end to a brutal and deadly conflict. This interaction is the subject of this post.

Cases of the Year: 2022

5 January 2023 by Jasper Gold

The year passed was, unsurprisingly, another year of tumult and surprise, something that by now registers as the norm rather than an aberration. Even so, 2022 must be a standout year – even by recent standards. From Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to the death of Queen Elizabeth II, the collapse of two consecutive Tory governments, dramatic election results around the world from Israel to Brazil, and in the run up to the festive season a football World Cup as mired in human rights controversy as in any sporting event can be, 2022 was not a quiet year. 

Nor did the legal world disappoint. On the Parliamentary side of things, Justice Secretary Dominic Raab’s controversial Bill of Rights Bill continues to clunk through Parliament, and other bills with interesting human rights implications have had their moment in the sun as well. To take but one example, the Online Safety Bill, whose controversial but central parts dealing with ‘legal but harmful’ speech were removed recently, is yet to become law after extensive reform following criticisms based on freedom of expression.

But the focus of this post is not on Parliament, or politics in general, but on the highlights of 2022 in the Courts. So with no further ado and in no particular order, the cases which (in the completely impartial and objective joint opinion of the co-editors of this blog) have defined 2022 are:

Drelon v France: Collection and retention of personal data concerning presumed sexual orientation was a violation of Article 8

20 September 2022 by Guest Contributor

On 8 September 2022, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) handed down its decision in Drelon v France (application nos. 3153/16 and 27758/18).[1] The Court unanimously found a violation of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights in relation to the collection by the French Blood Donation Service, the Établissement Français du Sang (EFS), of personal data relating to a potential blood donor’s presumed sexual orientation and the excessive length of time the data was kept in a public institution.

Challenge to Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme dismissed by Supreme Court

16 August 2021 by Guest Contributor

A and B v Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority and another [2021] UKSC 27

On appeal from [2018] EWCA Civ 1534

The claimants in the case were victims of human trafficking with unspent convictions in Lithuania. The Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme (CICS) provides compensation to victims of crime, apart from where they have unspent criminal convictions (“the exclusionary rule”). The question for the Supreme Court was whether the exclusionary rule breached the claimants’ rights under Articles 4 and 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The Court found that the rule did not breach these rights.

Factual background

The CICS is a statutory scheme established by the Secretary of State for Justice which permits compensation to be given to a person “if they sustain a criminal injury which is directly attributable to their being a direct victim of a crime of violence”. But this is subject to the exclusionary rule for a person with an unspent conviction for an offence with a custodial sentence.

The appellants, A and B, were Lithuanian nationals and twin brothers. They were convicted of burglary and theft respectively in 2010 and 2011. They were then trafficked to the United Kingdom in 2013, where they were abused and subjected to labour exploitation. The traffickers were convicted for these criminal offences in January 2016.

On 16 June 2016, the appellants applied for compensation under the CICS. A’s conviction for burglary only became spent in June 2020, while B’s conviction for theft became spent on 11 November 2016. Because at the time of their application to the CICS they both had unspent convictions, they were disqualified from receiving compensation. They brought a claim for judicial review against the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority (CICA) and the Secretary of State for Justice.

Detention, Damages and Draft Remedial Orders: a look at the Strasbourg case law behind the proposal to amend the Human Rights Act

11 June 2020 by Alex Ewing

When a provision of legislation is held to be incompatible with a Convention right, a Minister of the Crown ‘may by order make such amendments to the primary legislation as he considers necessary’. This power to take remedial action, contained within section 10 of the Human Rights Act (HRA), applies when a domestic court finds an incompatibility with the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), and also when the Minister considers a provision of legislation incompatible with the Convention ‘having regard to a finding of the European Court of Human Rights’ (ECtHR). A recent draft remedial order laid before Parliament aims to remedy an incompatibility of the latter kind, following the ECtHR’s judgment in Hammerton v United Kingdom no. 6287/10 ECHR 2016. The draft remedial order is of particular interest because it purports to amend the Human Rights Act itself. 

Professor Richard Ekins, writing for Policy Exchange, has criticised the draft remedial order as ultra vires and ‘of doubtful constitutional propriety’ and argues that the power in section 10 does not authorise ministers to amend the HRA itself. Further, he contends that the Hammerton judgment of the Strasbourg Court – which gives rise to the draft remedial order – is open to question. This blog post seeks to demonstrate that, whatever the merits of the wider argument about the constitutional propriety of amending the HRA through the power in section 10, the Hammerton judgment itself is based on well established ECHR case law. It is suggested that, in so far as it rests on a characterisation of the Hammerton judgment as unreasoned or lacking a reasonable basis, any view that the draft remedial order is of questionable validity is mistaken

Holocaust denial in a parliamentary speech: criminal conviction not a breach of Article 10

11 October 2019 by Joanna Curtis

Pastörs -v- Germany (Case no. 55225/14))

On 3 October 2019 the European Court of Human Rights dismissed an application by former NDP leader Udo Pastörs that his criminal conviction in Germany for making a “qualified Auschwitz denial” in a parliamentary speech infringed his right to freedom of speech under Article 10 ECHR. The Court held that, although interferences over statements made in parliament must be closely scrutinised, they deserve little, if any, protection if their content is at odds with the democratic values of the ECHR system.

Previous Holocaust denial cases before the European Court have arisen from statements made in various media, including a book (Garaudy -v- France (dec.), no. 65831/01, 24 June 2003), a TV show (Williamson -v- Germany, no. 64496/17, 8 January 2019) and even as part of a comedy routine (M’Bala M’Bala -v- France, no. 25239/13, 20 October 2015). This time the Court was called upon to consider statements made in a parliamentary context. The case involves ultra-right wing nationalist politics, parliamentary immunity from prosecution, the parliament’s ability to self-regulate that immunity, and the courts as final arbiters of such disputes. Although the statements concerned were made back in 2010, 9 years later the case still feels very topical.

ALBA Conference 2019: A Review

7 October 2019 by Conor Monighan

This post is the first in a series of five reports by Conor Monighan from this year’s conference held by the Administrative Law Bar Association. We will be publishing the next four posts over the next month every Monday.

This year’s ALBA conference featured an impressive list of speakers. There were talks from a Supreme Court judge, a former Lord Chancellor, top silks, and some of the best academics working in public law.

The conference covered a number of practical and substantive topics. The highpoint was an address given by Lord Sumption, in which he responded to criticism of his Reith Lectures. This post, together with those that follow, summarises the key points from the conference.

Computer algorithm predicts most Strasbourg judgments

22 January 2017 by Rosalind English

Artificial intelligence … it’s no longer in the future. It’s with us now.

I posted a review of a book about artificial intelligence in autumn last year. The author’s argument was not that we might find ourselves, some time in the future, subservient to or even enslaved by cool-looking androids from Westworld. His thesis is more disturbing: it’s happening now, and it’s not robots. We are handing over our autonomy to a set of computer instructions called algorithms.

If you remember from my post on that book, I picked out a paragraph that should give pause to any parent urging their offspring to run the gamut of law-school, training contract, pupillage and the never never land of equity partnership or tenancy in today’s competitive legal industry. Yuval Noah Harari suggests that the everything lawyers do now – from the management of company mergers and acquisitions, to deciding on intentionality in negligence or criminal cases – can and will be performed a hundred times more efficiently by computers.

Now here is proof of concept. University College London has just announced the results of the project it gave to its AI researchers, working with a team from the universities of Sheffield and Pennsylvania. Its news website announces that a machine learning algorithm has just analysed, and predicted, “the outcomes of a major international court”:

The judicial decisions of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) have been predicted to 79% accuracy using an artificial intelligence (AI) method.

Continue reading →

Unlimited Immigration Detention and the Right to Liberty – the Round-up

24 May 2016 by Hannah Lynes

Photo credit: RT

In the news

The absence of fixed time limits in the UK system of immigration detention does not breach Article 5 of the Convention (the right to liberty), according to a recent decision of the European Court of Human Rights in JN v United Kingdom.

The applicant was an Iranian national who was refused asylum in the UK and issued with a deportation order. He was detained in an immigration removal centre for more than four and a half years, following completion of a custodial sentence for indecent assault. The applicant complained that in the absence of fixed time limits, domestic law was unclear and did not produce foreseeable consequences for individuals.

This argument was rejected by the Court, which re-iterated that Article 5 does not lay down maximum time limits for detention pending deportation. The issue was said to be whether domestic law contained sufficient procedural safeguards against arbitrariness, and in this regard the UK did not fall short of Convention requirements. However, the Court did find that between January 2008 and September 2009 deportation of the applicant had not been pursued with “due diligence”, and his detention during this period was therefore in breach of his right to liberty.

The decision will come as a disappointment to campaigners, who point out that the UK is the only EU Member State which places no time limit on the detention of foreign nationals. According to the UNHCR, detention can have “a lasting, detrimental impact on the mental and physical health of asylum seekers”, and both a cross-party Parliamentary Inquiry and a recent report of the UN Human Rights Committee have called on the UK to adopt an upper limit.

It remains open to the Government to do so. However, in light of the judgment in JN, the introduction of a statutory time limit would now appear unlikely. A spokeswoman told the Guardian that the Home Office were pleased with the outcome of the case: “We maintain that our immigration detention system is firm but fair”.

In other news

The Queen’s Speech has declared that “proposals will be brought forward for a British Bill of Rights” – wording that is near identical to last year’s commitment to ‘bring forward proposals for a British Bill of Rights”. Speaking to the Huffington Post, Policy Director at Liberty, Bella Sankey remarks that if this “felt like groundhog day, it was because little progress has been made” towards the scrapping of the Human Rights Act. UKHRB founder Adam Wagner provides a useful list of reactions and coverage here.

A report from the European Commission points to evidence that “the migration crisis has been exploited by criminal networks involved in trafficking in human beings”, who target the most vulnerable. According to official figures, in 2013-2014 there were 15,846 registered victims of trafficking in the EU, although the true number is considered to be “substantially higher”. The BBC reports on the findings.

The Supreme Court has upheld an interim injunction in the ‘celebrity threesome’ case, until after the full trial for invasion of privacy. The Court of Appeal had been wrong to enhance the weight attached to freedom of expression (article 10 ECHR) as compared with the right to respect for privacy (article 8 ECHR) – neither article had preference over the other in the balancing exercise. David Hart QC provides an analysis of the decision for the UKHRB – a summary of the main points can be found on RightsInfo

In the courts

• Karácsony and Others v Hungary

The applicants were Hungarian nationals and members of parliament, who had been issued with fines for engaging in protests that were disruptive of parliamentary proceedings. They complained that this had violated their right to freedom of expression (article 10 ECHR).

The Court observed that Parliaments were entitled to react when their members engaged in disorderly conduct disrupting the normal functioning of the legislature. However, on the present facts domestic legislation had not provided for any possibility for the MPs concerned to be involved in the relevant disciplinary procedure. The interference with the applicants’ right to freedom of expression was therefore not proportionate to the legitimate aims pursued, because it was not accompanied by adequate procedural safeguards. Accordingly, the Court found a violation of Article 10.

• Lopes de Sousa Fernandes v Portugal

The applicant’s husband had died in circumstances where there had been a negligent failure to diagnose meningitis shortly after (successful) nasal polyp surgery, although that negligent failure was not necessarily causative. In its Chamber judgment of 15 December 2015, the European Court of Human Rights held that there had been a violation of Article 2 (right to life) of the Convention as to the right to life and, unanimously, that there had been a violation of Article 2.

Analysis of that decision is provided by Jeremy Hyam QC for the UK HRB. On 2 May 2016 the Grand Chamber Panel accepted the Portuguese Government’s request that the case be referred to the Grand Chamber.

Publications

Those in need of some summer reading might consider: Five Ideas to Fight For, by Anthony Lester, recently published. The book describes the development of English law in relation to human rights, equality, free speech, privacy and the rule of law, explaining how our freedom is under threat and why it matters.

UK HRB posts

CA says ex-pats cannot say yes or no to Brexit – David Hart QC

The British Bill of Rights Show: Series 14, Episode 9…*Zzzzzzz* – Adam Wagner

Three Way in the Supreme Court: PJS remains PJS – David Hart QC

The National Preventive Mechanism of the United Kingdom – John Wadham

Bank Mellat’s $4bn claim: CA rules out one element, but the rest to play for – David Hart QC

Hannah Lynes