Reviewed by: David Pickup
Author: Reza Banakar (editor)
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing
ISBN: 978-1-4094-0740-9
Price: £35

One mention of the term ‘human rights’ and the public think of convicted prisoners winning the right to vote, criminals who are a risk to this country not being deported, and sex offenders being able to challenge registration.

It is a bad time to be a human rights lawyer. The perception in this country is that human rights are a bad thing, ‘foreign’ and, worse of all, ‘European’.

One key problem is that the European Court of Human Rights is confused with the EU and anything European is seen as bad.

We do not tend to take rights seriously in this country.

There is a fairly strong argument that human rights legislation has done nothing to protect the rights of law-abiding individuals, and debate simply trivialises rights. Human rights are perceived as rights for ‘bad people’.

This book is an interesting and lively read. It contains a number of papers arising from an academic workshop on human rights.

It reflects an interesting side of the European debate, focusing on countries that we would normally regard as liberal and not associated with a colonial/imperial past. Their liberality has encouraged immigration.

We, in England and Wales, would align ourselves with liberal northern Europe rather than central Europe. We have struggled with issues about multi-culturalism and the extent to which groups should integrate.

The book makes the point that the default position is to regard Islam as either ‘moderate’ or ‘extreme’.

After some weighty academic discussion of rights, the following chapters consider particular issues.

These include: the school uniform cases in the UK; the Danish cartoons; individual cases of use of terrorism controls in this country; and the experience of non-indigenous cultures and concern at being forced to assimilate.

Bad cases do not always make good law, but the chapters on specific issues are more readable for non-academics.

There is considerable criticism levelled at countries that seek to proscribe items of head- and other dress. My concern is the book does not address why some countries have discussed such restrictions.

The book also tends to be a snapshot of those rights issues that are topical, rather than looking at them in historical context.

This is not an easy subject, because one person’s cherished right is another’s idea of ‘taking liberties’.

But it is essential for the lawyer, as our role is to justify the role of the courts to rein in the state. If lawyers do not care about rights, who will?

David Pickup is a partner at Pickup & Scott Solicitors

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