LL216      Half Unit
Freedom and the Law in Britain

This information is for the 2025/26 session.

Course Convenor

Availability

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. The role of the Human Rights Act 1998 in the protection of civil liberties 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 by way of one two-hour seminar weekly in the Autumn Term. The course is mainly statute and case-law based with additional academic readings. To complete it successfully, students must prepare for each class by reading and thinking through the relevant materials; 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.

20 hours of seminars in the Autumn Term.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Autumn Term.

Students will be expected to produce one formative essay.

• Conor Gearty, Civil Liberties (OUP, 2007)
• 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: 150 Minutes in the Spring exam period