Human Rights at the Edges of Late Imperial Britain: The Tyrer Case and Judicial Corporal Punishment from the Isle of Man to Montserrat, 1972–1990

Abstract

In Tyrer v. United Kingdom (1978), the European Court of Human of Human Rights ruled that judicial corporal punishment contravened Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which proscribed “degrading treatment or punishment.” The case unfolded at a formative moment in British legal activism, as left-wing civil-liberties lawyers who had been wary of human rights discourse began taking cases to Strasbourg. The case also involved tactical challenges for British politicians and government lawyers. The case originated on the Isle of Man, which is close to the British mainland but constitutionally not part of the United Kingdom: it is a “crown dependency” with its own executive, legislature, and judiciary, and it persisted with judicial corporal punishment long after the practice had been abolished in Great Britain. By convention, the British government respected the island's laws and criminal-justice policies, but Britain was responsible for the island's compliance with international agreements—including the European Convention on Human Rights. How the British government dealt with the Isle of Man during and after the litigation had direct implications for a host of other small territories in what remained of the British empire—in particular, Britain's remaining Caribbean territories. The Tyrer case's protracted endgame was an object lesson in how much Britain's “unwritten” constitution depends on negotiation, manipulation, and avoiding the overt exercise of powers that might crumble upon use.