ABSTRACT
In relation to the Human Rights Act, Dawn Oliver emphasizes the potential for invocation of convention rights in actions between private persons. Oliver's method of making good her main claim is to point to the many features that public and private law has in common. Klares claim that there is no public/private distinction is part of an argument directed against the idea that there is a part of the law private law as conceived in the classical liberal thought of the nineteenth century that concerns only the relationships between individuals and not the public interest. The problem of the hybrid public authority, able to act at once for public purposes and for its own purposes, must therefore be faced. The analogous problem where a challenge is made under the Human Rights Act is how to balance the convention rights invoked by the claimant against those of the contracting party performing the public service.
