Thematic Analysis: Human Rights and the 2010/11 U.K. Supreme Court

The efforts of the UK Supreme Court in the field of human rights during its first year reflected and informed a broader debate in society generally as to whether decisions of the European Court of Human Rights (hereafter "EurCtHR") in Strasbourg are appropriate for the domestic context. As the government mooted in Whitehall the merits of substituting the Human Rights Act 1998 (hereafter "HRA") with an autochthonous "British Bill of Rights", the newly-formed Supreme Court in the old Middlesex Guildhall struggled to articulate a framework for why, when and how the rights guaranteed by the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (hereafter "ECHR"), as incorporated into UK law by the HRA, might not mean for the British what Strasbourg says they mean for Europe.