The Unbalanced Constitution

Abstract An attempt has been made by corporate interests in the United Kingdom to capture the Human Rights Act 1998, whose importance for commercial practice was quickly identified by city solicitors representing business clients. We find a commitment to social rights and the principle of solidarity by the architects of the new European constitution. But does it matter that there is no such reference in the British constitution or that the incorporation of the principles of the European Convention on Human Rights into domestic law is not balanced by the incorporation of social rights? This chapter shows that it does and argues that by dividing the indivisible there is a danger paradoxically of both undermining and diminishing the human rights of the many, at the expense of the human rights of the few. There was no priority in the British constitution for civil and political rights over social and economic rights. Priority was accorded to legislation at the expense of the common law.