Subverting Law and Liberty? The House of Lords, Control Orders and the UK Human Rights Act

a Castan Centre lecture presented by Dr Joo-Cheong Tham

Senior Lecturer, University of Melbourne Law School

Dr Joo-Cheong Tham has written widely on Australian counter-terrorism laws and has given evidence to parliamentary inquiries into these laws. His current work in this area investigates the impact of bills of rights on counter-terrorism laws. As part of this project, he recently undertook a comparative study of control orders in Australia and the United Kingdom under the auspices of a British Academy Visiting Fellowship at King's College, University of London. His other areas of interest are the funding of politics and the legal regulation of casual employment.

In October last year, the House of Lords handed down three decisions dealing with challenges to the UK control orders regime based on the Human Rights Act. In a setback for the UK government, the Lords found that control orders imposing 18-hour daily curfews were not compatible with the right to liberty. Yet these decisions are notable not only for what they prohibit but what they permit: while 18-hour daily curfews were found in breach of human rights standards, the court was prepared to sanction 16-hour daily curfews. Bound up with this loss of liberty was a weak commitment to the rule of law with the Lords’ reasoning breaching the principle of legality and their decisions licensing arbitrary exercises of executive power. These decisions provide a cautionary tale to Australian advocates of Charters of Rights who portray courts as protectors of human rights in the area of national security.

Date:   Tuesday 5 August 2008
Time:   6 - 7 pm; Light refreshments provided 7 - 7.30 pm               
Venue:   Monash University Law Chambers,472 Bourke Street, Melbourne
RSVP:  castan.centre@law.monash.edu.au  - 9905 3327

Public Lecture – All Welcome