ABSTRACT
Criminal law has traditionally been the subject of the highest number of applications from the United Kingdom to Strasbourg. The early application of the Convention rights in Scotland, in the context of the devolved powers of the Scottish Ministers under the Scotland Act 1998,1 again indicated that challenges to the criminal justice system were likely to predominate in domestic law. It comes as no surprise to find that this has been borne out in English law, although the fact that the initial trickle of successful applications for declarations of incompatibility have come from other areas of legal practice will be treated by some as evidence of the fundamental fairness of the English criminal justice system, and by others as the indication of the conservative approach taken by domestic courts.
