"By granting inviolable rights to his subjects and corresponding restrictions to his own power, King John reluctantly created a legacy of justice which has stood the test of time. The Human Rights Act is an updated expression of these principles. We should not be surprised that it too has met with hostility.
Although everyone has human rights, it is usually only the poor and marginalised who struggle to assert them. Sometimes we do not want to hear these voices as they contain...
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"By granting inviolable rights to his subjects and corresponding restrictions to his own power, King John reluctantly created a legacy of justice which has stood the test of time. The Human Rights Act is an updated expression of these principles. We should not be surprised that it too has met with hostility.
Although everyone has human rights, it is usually only the poor and marginalised who struggle to assert them. Sometimes we do not want to hear these voices as they contain inconvenient truths about the unequal society we live in.
Yet, Clause 40 of Magna Carta dictates: “To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice”. This blueprint for a fair society was a distant hope in medieval England and we have still not achieved it to this day.
Legal aid, which is the tool by which the poor can access justice, is, like the Human Rights Act, under serious threat. In 2013, the Government introduced proposals designed to shut out foreigners and prisoners from much of legal aid funding. It is worth noting that when Lord Justice Moses held that the denial of legal aid to foreigners could not be justified because all who are equally subject to the penalty of law must also be equally entitled to its protection, he had 800 years of principle behind him.
Prisoners, and sometimes foreigners, may be unpopular. But we deny no one. Least of all, I would say, the unpopular."
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