Terms of Art: Human Rights Law
Conor Gearty, 11 March 2010
If the first legitimate worry about a social democratic bill of rights would be an explosion of litigation, the second concerns the danger of legitimating a wrong or a great injustice. The Human Rights Act has not really been tested in this regard, since Labour has done so little of an even vaguely socialist nature. But the right to property probably did constrain it in relation to the nationalisation of Network Rail (otherwise why pay compensation?) and there can be little doubt that private schools are standing by with batteries of lawyers to argue that even removing their charitable status (much less the schools themselves) will be a breach of the human rights of parents.