This article considers the role of rhetoric in British political discourse with a particular focus on how it aids the construction of legislation that restricts human rights. Using the parliamentary debates concerning the Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Act 2021 as an extensive example, it demonstrates how the rhetorical theatrics of legislating in the Westminster parliament play a fundamental role in justifying restrictions on rights to the public. Rhetoric fulfils three functions in this process: persuasion of the need for rights-restricting legislation; obstruction of scrutiny of such plans, and the perpetuation of national myths and tropes upon which such policies are debated. Arguing that such rhetorical functions are immovable from British political discourse, the article concludes by proposing how they can best be diluted.
Northern Ireland has no effective process to address the legacy of the human tragedy of decades of conflict. And yet during that conflict, and especially in the years since the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement 1998, people have employed multiple legal mechanisms to gain information about events which affected them and their loved ones. Human rights challenges, public inquiries, freedom of information requests, police investigations and fresh inquests have all contributed to a patchwork of approaches to truth recovery. The UK Government has long viewed these efforts with suspicion; as the primary state actor involved in the conflict its records provide a much richer source of information about historic wrongs than the recollections of members of clandestine paramilitary organisations. Successive Conservative administrations have characterised many of these efforts as "lawfare", intended to persecute veterans long after the events in question and undermine public faith in the UK's Armed Forces. One under-explored element of this complex picture is use of tort in legacy cases. Civil actions, supported by legal aid funding in Northern Ireland, provide a potential avenue for the discovery of information held by public bodies. Even unsuccessful actions can thus contribute new information about the events in question. Many of the harms inflicted during the conflict were torts as well as crimes, and this article assesses the extent to which these civil actions provide an ersatz mechanism for truth recovery, and challenges efforts to curtail such actions as a "witch-hunt".
The“annexation” of Crimea by the Russian Federation and the ongoing conflict in Eastern Ukraine have resulted in widespread human rights abuses. Both Ukraine and the Russian Federation are signatories to the European Convention on Human Rights and the Convention should apply within the territory and to the conflict. However, recent applications to the European Court of Human Rights reveal a great deal of confusion over which State bears responsibility for protecting human rights in different parts of Ukraine. This article seeks to shine a light on this problem presenting a deep analysis of the European Court of Human Rights’ jurisprudence and discussing how it applies to both the conflict in Eastern Ukraine and “annexed” Crimea. It addresses salient issues such as responsibility for the actions of non-state actors and armed groups in Eastern Ukraine and whether the legality of the “annexation” has any bearing on the human rights obligations of each State. The article presents a detailed critique of recent judgments from the European Court of Human Rights arguing that the jurisprudence of the Court has created a bewildering degree of complexity and uncertainty as to the obligations of each State and discussing the practical implications of this uncertainty.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.