Survey seeks views on citing human rights treaties

Lawyers who appear before Scottish courts and tribunals are being invited to help a research project by completing a short survey on their use of human rights treaties.

Funded by the Royal Society of Edinburgh and undertaken by Dr Samuel White and lecturer Susannah Paul at the University of the West of Scotland, the project seeks to understand more about the use of human rights treaties in Scottish courts and tribunals.

The aims of the project are to:

• understand and explain how the courts engage with unincorporated human rights treaties in their decisions;
• understand how and why legal practitioners use, or do not use, unincorporated rights instruments in their arguments in courts and tribunals; and
• translate this understanding into training aimed at equipping legal practitioners with the skills effectively and successfully to use these rights treaties in courts and tribunals.

Initial analysis of judgments has revealed that while courts and tribunals in Scotland do engage in some use of these instruments, this use is not particularly widespread and has not developed to the same extent as the European Convention on Human Rights did prior to the Human Rights Act 1998.

The team is now seeking to understand lawyers’ perspectives on human rights treaties and why they use, or do not use these when making legal arguments. The  survey has been designed to assist this. It can be accessed using this link.