"Going to Strasbourg" published this week

I have just received some advance copies of my new book, Going to Strasbourg, which is published this Thursday by Oxford University Press

The book, which contains oral history accounts by applicants to Strasbourg who challenged sexual orientation discrimination in the UK, is published just as the UK Conservative government begins another round of criticism of human rights law. 

The UK government looks set to repeal the Human Rights Act 1998 and replace it with legislation that will almost certainly remove or weaken the duty of UK domestic courts to 'take into account' the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights. 

If that was not bad enough, there remains the lingering concern that the UK might leave the ECHR system. The Prime Minister, Theresa May, is an outspoken opponent of the ECHR and has said that it "can bind the hands of parliament, adds nothing to our prosperity, [and] makes us less secure by preventing the deportation of dangerous foreign nationals". 

Going to Strasbourg tells a different story, showing how the ECHR system has been a vital means by which people in the UK have challenged discrimination based on sexual orientation. It demonstrates very clearly that the tolerance and equality that characterises the UK today is the result, in large part, of the UK's membership of the ECHR.

On the same day that my book is published, OUP also publish Professor Conor Gearty's new book, On Fantasy Island, which looks set to provide further antidote to the anti-human rights fever that is spreading across the UK.

The Going to Strasbourg book launch is on Friday October 21 at Conway Hall and everyone is welcome.




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