ABSTRACT
The chapter focuses on the assessment of the remedies in a particular Member State in the sense that a reading of the European Court case law against the United Kingdom shows that in the UK system the decisions of the European Court on Human Rights (ECtHR) were not really enacted, no exception is made for the pilot judgements. Nevertheless, the theoretical framework to understand the real English set-up is not based on the view that the domestic reading of Convention rights is more circumscribed than in Strasbourg, because of the Member State concerned is deemed “particular”, above all considering the approach of the European Court in relevant matters. Therefore, as we will explain in detail, the relevant analytical tool can be found in the complex and strained relationship between the European Court and the United Kingdom as whole, especially after the withdrawal from the European Union. This chapter avoids the category of the “dialogue between the Courts”, because, in our opinion, it has not a proper epistemological scope and, in the specific case, it could lead the reader to misinterpret the main idea of the chapter. Concerning the life imprisonment, for example, the judiciary does not amount to a body monitoring the penal and prison policies in England and Wales, rather endorsing the political choices decided by the British Government. We will focus on the English system through the core issues of the whole-life imprisonment, the right to vote and, in some aspects, the deaths in custody. These critical aspects can also be considered a strategic observatory to interpret the role of the ECtHR in the human rights protection system, given the “serious risk that the convention is applied with double standards”.
