Human Rights Act 1998 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words - 1

Human Rights Act 1998 - Essay Example Who will then protect the ordinary citizen from suffering from the wrath of the angry Queen of Hearts (the executive) and give them a chance to have their cases reconsidered and to achieve procedural and substantive justice Our saviour is of course the remedy of Judicial Review through the Human Rights Act 1998 which has become more of an eye sore to the Executive in the yester decades as the Judiciary continues to "check and balance" an unruly, highly political executive through the not so recent Human Rights Act 1998 which seems to have absorbed in the veins of judicial activism and recent case law with much ease. The promulgation of the Human Rights Act 1998 was one giant step towards the process of judicial review of administrative action in the United Kingdom in the context of its constitutional significance. Judicial review has shifted the growing balance of power which is shifting in the favour of the courts in their "Judicial Activism" since the 1960's which has often alarmed the members of the executive with many academic commentators defending this as "inevitable" in the face of the expanding role of the State1 and increasingly draconian legislation (especially in the area of Immigration and Terrorism law post 9/11 and 7/7).Prior to the Human Rights Act 1998 the English approach to a systematisation of judicial review was remedial based and thus similar to the development of the prerogative writs2 which developed as personal requests by an individual to the King for the redressal of a wrong suffered by another individual.3The UK has no separate system of administrative courts (and the concept never found favour with the system either eversince the abolition of infamous prerogative Star Chamber).Thus the present administrative review system of England can be described as a body that combines both a substantive body of law containing grounds of review and a large number of administrative tribunals dealing with statutory appeals from decisions of public bodies. Thus it is possible to see that the British Constitution is largely unwritten to date with the exception of the new review powers for the courts introduced by the Human Rights Act 1998. The Act goes a long way in securing the rights and freedoms of the British Citizens in a many ways.In particular the recently promulgated Human Rights Act 1998 makes it unlawful for a public authority to act in a way which is incompatible with a Convention right(Section 6(2)) would certainly subscribe to the Pure Ultra Vires view discussed above. This Act provides a "statutory basis" to judicial review of administrative action. Moreover the Human rights Act 1998 has played a significant large role in strengthening the judiciary's stance against unwarranted access by the public authorities and as well as helping them declare any UK law incompatible with the Human Rights Act 1998.However even though the role of the Act has been lauded by many circles in the