The top commercial firms received a pat on the back this week – and from a somewhat unlikely quarter. A research project commissioned by the Lord Chancellor, Lord Irvine, has concluded that it is the well resourced business law firms – as opposed to the hard-up high street solicitors – that have been making the earliest and most inventive challenges under the Human Rights Act (HRA).
The study, by two university academics, found that the courts had coped well with the incorporation of the HRA into UK law. To Lord Irvine and the court system’s credit, a flurry of training activity took place before the introduction of the HRA in a bid to give the lie to the claims of many that the courts would be flooded with HRA-related claims.
