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Professor Conor Gearty

This course is available on the BA in Anthropology and Law and LLB in Laws. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit and to General Course students.

The focus of this course is on civil liberties protection in the UK, their history and development over the years, and the state of freedom in contemporary Britain. It considers the common law approach to liberty and analyses how the Human Rights Act impacts on the protection of civil liberties. The emphasis will be on the way in which civil liberties are practically protected in the UK, with the law on police powers, on public order and on terrorism being the subject of particular interest. Inevitably in the current political climate, the future of the Human Rights Act is also considered. Contemporary protests on climate change, inequality and Palestine,  are discussed in order to answer the question , how much protest is possible in Britain today.

The goal of the course is to enable students to critically assess the extent to which freedom is protected in UK law, both historically and at the current time. Has protection declined over the years? Was there ever a ‘golden age’ for freedom in Britain? How relevant is Britain’s colonial past to its approach to civil liberties today?

The teaching of this course is mainly case‐based. There will be one one-hour lecture and one two-hour seminar weekly in the Winter Term. To complete it successfully, students must prepare for each class by reading and thinking through the relevant cases; the classes will be conducted on the basis of the expectation that the students are familiar with the materials. There is no comprehensive textbook available for this course.

Syllabus:

The theory of civil liberties protection; the history of civil liberties; the Human Rights Act 1998; the relationship between the Act and the protection of civil liberties; the law on police powers; the law on freedom of assembly and public order; UK anti-terrorism law. The debate about a new bill of rights for Britain.

This course is delivered through seminars totalling a minimum of 20 hours in Winter Term. This course includes a reading week in Week Six. There will also be a revision class in Spring Term.

Students will be expected to produce one formative essay.

• Conor Gearty, Civil Liberties (OUP, 2007) and (more recently)
• Tom Hickman, Public Law after the Human Rights Act (Hart, 2010),
• Aileen Kavanagh, Constitutional Review under the UK Human Rights Act (CUP, 2009).
• Keith Ewing and Conor Gearty, Freedom under Thatcher (Oxford, 1990)
• Keith Ewing and Conor Gearty, The Struggle for Civil Liberties (Oxford, 2000)
• Conor Gearty, On Fantasy Island. Britain, Strasbourg and Human Rights (OUP, 2016),
• Conor Gearty, Homeland Insecurity. The Rise and Rise of Global Anti-terrorism Law (Polity, 2024)
• Bradley, Ewing and Knight, Constitutional and Administrative Law (18th edn, paperback 2022).

Exam (100%, duration: 2 hours and 30 minutes) in the spring exam period.