Neither herald nor fanfare : the limited impact of the ECHR Act 2003 on rights infrastructure in Ireland.

摘要

With neither herald nor fanfare, the European Convention on Human Rights Act 2003 entered into force on 31 December 2003 and so, after decades of discussion, the European Convention on Human Rights had become transposed into Irish law and capable of use—through the prism of the Act—in domestic litigation. ududIt is well known that the Act has had nothing close to the impact of its close cousin the Human Rights Act 1998 in the United Kingdom. Nor has it attracted the vitriol and political attention directed to that Act. Rather it has slid quietly and somewhat unspectacularly onto the statute books and into the legal system. More than ten years after it came into force it is opportune to ask what, if any, impact the European Convention on Human Rights Act 2003 has actually had in Ireland.