Cambridge University Press has published Human Rights Law in the UK: Themes and Principles, a major new textbook authored by three Faculty scholars: Kirsty Hughes, Stevie Martin, and Stephanie Palmer. The book also contains a foreword by Lady Brenda Hale, Yorke Distinguished Fellow at the Faculty.
The book offers a rich and analytical guide to the complex landscape of human rights law, focusing specifically on the interplay between the domestic UK legal framework and the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). A core feature of the work is its establishment of the nature of rights and their critiques at the outset, providing a strong foundation for a nuanced analysis of key human rights issues. It not only examines the established frameworks in detail but also highlights how these two legal systems have resolved - often inconsistently - different issues.
Distinguished by its detailed engagement with Strasbourg caselaw, domestic jurisprudence, and contemporary academic scholarship, the volume ensures readers gain a comprehensive understanding of how rights are conceptualised and applied. Key issues examined include the right to life, the prohibition of torture, modern slavery and human trafficking, terrorism, immigration, privacy, and non-discrimination, as well as contentious topics such as abortion and assisted dying. Targeted primarily at Postgraduate and PhD students in Law, this publication serves as an essential, comprehensive resource for advanced study and academic analysis in this dynamic and often challenging field of practice.
For more information about this book, please refer to the Cambridge University Press website.
For information about publications by Kirsty Hughes, Stevie Martin, and Stephanie Palmer, please refer to their Faculty profiles.
Reviews and endorsements
‘The authors bring the subject to life in a rich, multifaceted way, and their expertise and experience make the book a reliable, thought-provoking guide. Readers will find illumination and stimulating new ideas on every page, as I have.’ : David Feldman - KC, FBA, FRSA
‘This is the right book, at the right time, in the right place with the right focus. The quality of the democracies which govern us, and the solidity of the rule of law which necessarily underpins effective democracies, can be assessed via the degree of respect for human rights in a given jurisdiction. By focusing on substantive topics instead of individual Convention rights, and via the choice of those topics, the authors illustrate this point extremely well. It is a point too often lost in modern debates about human rights but one which is becoming startlingly real (in courts across the globe) in the turbulent times in which we are living.’ : Síofra O'Leary - former President of the European Court of Human Rights
‘This book is a must for any human rights lawyer, academic or activist. The authors have successfully shown that the old-fashioned distinction between monist and dualist constitutional orders has become irrelevant, and domestic jurisdictions only have to gain when they leave the misleading comfort of a narrow-minded, parochial understanding of human rights law and embrace an open-minded, multifaceted, cosmopolitan interpretation of that law.’ : Paulo Pinto de Albuquerque - former Judge of the European Court of Human Rights