Property

No hunting on my land, please: but only if my objections are based on conscience

23 October 2012 by Rosalind English

Chabauty v France 4 October 2012 – read judgment

I have posted previously on cases involving the ethical objection of landowners to being forced to allow hunting over their property.

These objections have generally found favour with the Strasbourg Court in the balancing of private and public interests under the right to property.  Mr Chabauty puts the issue into another perspective. He also complained that he was unable to have his land removed from the control of an approved municipal hunters’ association. The difference was – and this proved to be critical to the outcome of the case –  Mr Chabauty is not himself against hunting on ethical grounds. Since no conscience was underlying his Convention complaint, the Court found it not to be disproportionate for the French state to require small landowners to pool their hunting grounds. As such, there had been no violation of Article 1 Protocol 1 or Article 14.
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Hunting, animals, and the evolving landscape of rights

4 July 2012 by Rosalind English

Herrmann v Germany (Application no. 9300/07) 26 June 2012 – read judgment

The Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights has ruled that the obligation of a landowner to allow hunting on his property violated his Convention rights. Although the majority based their conclusion on his right to peaceful enjoyment of possessions,  the partially concurring and dissenting opinions and the judgment as a whole provide an interesting insight into the way freedom of conscience challenges are to be approached in a secular society where religion holds less sway than individual ethical positions on certain issues.

Background

In 2002 the Federal Constitutional Court in Germany ruled that the granting of exceptional authorisation for the slaughter of animals without previous stunning, on religious grounds, did not breach the German Basic Law Schächt-Entscheidung (BVerfGE 99, 1, 15 January 2002). The social uproar that followed the ruling led to the German constitutional legislature taking a significant step aimed at protecting animal welfare with the 2002 constitutional reform, by including Article 20a in the Basic Law:

“Mindful also of its responsibility toward future generations, the State shall protect the natural foundations of life and animals through legislation…”
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Case comment: Human rights, proportionality and local authority evictions

5 November 2010 by Rosalind English

Updated | We posted earlier on the Supreme Court ruling in Manchester City Council (Respondent) v Pinnock (Appellant), that requires courts to be satisfied that any order for possession sought by local authorities must be “in accordance with the law”, and (ii) “necessary in a democratic society” – that is, that it should be proportionate in the full meaning of the word.

How far this takes us from the previous position, where the role of the county court was limited to conducting a conventional judicial review of the councils’ decision in such cases, remains to be seen.

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