25 Years of the Human Rights Act

A one-day conference will take place at the University of Leeds to mark the 25th anniversary of the Human Rights Act 1998.

Few pieces of legislation have been more impactful across a range of legal areas than the Human Rights Act 1998. As the statute approaches 25 years since its entry into force (2 October 2025), it has influenced a huge range of subjects from criminal law to family law, constitutional law to media law and beyond. To mark the 25th anniversary of its entry into force, a one-day conference will take place at the University of Leeds, generously sponsored by the Society of Legal Scholars (SLS).

The conference will include panels on different areas of law. This Call for Papers asks anyone interested in presenting at the Conference to submit an abstract. Papers dealing with any aspect of the Human Rights Act (HRA) – its operation, its legacy, its strengths and its flaws – are welcome. We are particularly interested in papers which take a specific look at the HRA from the perspective of 2025: what has worked well and what hasn’t? At present we envisage that there will be panels on the following subject areas:

• Constitutional Law including controversial recent attempts at repeal of the HRA via the Bill of Rights Bill, disapplication of aspects of the HRA in different statutes eg the Victims and Prisoners Act and the Illegal Migration Act as well as wider constitutional issues like its impact on judicial review, the separation of powers and the legal constitution.
• Criminal Law including prisoner voting, challenges to counter-terrorism legislation, the disclosure of criminal records, immunity from prosecution under the Northern Ireland Troubles Act and the changes introduced in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2023.
• Family Law including entitlement to benefits, changes in the regulation of marriage, the introduction of same sex marriages and civil partnerships, and the regulation of parent-child relationships, including surrogacy and rights of children born out of wedlock.
• Media Law including the balancing of freedom of expression with other interests, super-injunctions, court reporting restrictions and libel cases.
• Labour Law including trade union rights, most notably in the recent Mercer case at the UK Supreme Court, and in other areas such as non-discrimination in the workplace.
• Devolution including challenges to legislative competence, power sharing in Northern Ireland and the role of Parliamentary sovereignty in the devolution settlement.

Please submit abstracts of no more than 300 words via email titled ‘HRA Conference Abstract’ to s.d.wallace@leeds.ac.uk and LG513@cam.ac.uk. The deadline for abstracts is 1 April 2025. We regret we cannot consider any applications submitted after this date.

The organisers will act to ensure diversity through ensuring a representative balance of speakers of different genders, ethnicity, ages, and career seniority. ECRs are particularly encouraged to attend and submit abstracts.