European Human Rights Law Review article on the Bill of Rights Commission

The latest issue of the European Human Rights Law Review – just published this week – includes an article I have written critiquing the report of the Commission on a Bill of Rights. The following is the abstract of the article, which gives a sense of the line I take in the piece:

In its recently-published Report, the Commission on a Bill of Rights advances very limited, inchoate proposals that are essentially superficial in nature. The Report fails to grapple with the fundamental questions that would naturally fall to be confronted as part of a serious debate about the future direction of human rights protection in the UK. The failure of the majority clearly to articulate what it understands a Bill of Rights to be renders vacuous its recommendation that such legislation be adopted in due course. The proposals contained in the Report are highly unlikely to be implemented in the foreseeable future, and nor is the Report likely to form a reference point for future discourse in this area. Key players in any future debate about a Bill of Rights would do well to learn from the evident shortcomings of the present Commission’s Report.

A pre-publication draft of the article can be found here on SSRN. The citation for the published version of the piece is: Elliott, “A Damp Squib in the Long Grass: The Report of the Commission on a Bill of Rights” [2013] EHRLR 137-151. For a shorter overview of the report of the Bill of Rights Commission, try this post which I wrote in December 2012.