By providing enforceable remedies for breaches of Convention Rights in domestic courts, and in allowing judges to scrutinise parliamentary legislation on human rights grounds, the United Kingdom's Human Rights Act 1998 marked a sea-change in the relationships between the individual and the state, and between the courts and the political branches of government, as they had been traditionally understood. Despite the undeniable practical importance of the Human Rights Act, widespread political and popular scepticism over the nature of rights adjudication and the relationship between human rights...

This book examines the dividing lines between the powers of the judicial branch of government and those of the executive and legislative branches in the light of two of the most significant constitutional reforms of recent years: the Human Rights Act 1998 and Constitutional Reform Act 2005. Both statutes have implications for the separation of powers within the United Kingdom constitution. The Human Rights Act brings the judges into much closer proximity with the decisions of political actors than previously permitted by the Wednesbury standard of review and the doctrine of parliamentary...