Abstract
These twenty-five cases, drawn from across the years in which the Human Rights Act has been in force, help explain why many jurists have long argued that the Act unsettles the UK’s constitution and distorts its government. This paper aims to enrich future public deliberation about the merits of the 1998 Act – about the case for its amendment or repeal – by improving public understanding about the impact that the Act has had in our courts and thus, by extension, on government and Parliament. In thinking about human rights law reform, parliamentarians, lawyers, civil servants, and members of the public should consider how the Act has operated in practice, a process of reflection which will be greatly aided by close engagement with the twenty-five cases that this paper profiles.