This weekend I will be revisiting a book released this year by Keith Ewing and entitled Bonfire of the Liberties: New Labour, Human Rights and the Rule of Law (2010, OUP) in conjunction with Helen Fenwick‘s review of the book in the new issue of the Journal of Law & Society. The blurb for Bonfire of the Liberties reads:

This provocative book confronts the corrosion of civil liberties under successive New Labour governments since 1997. It argues that the last decade has seen a wholesale failure of constitutional principle and exposed the futility of depending on legal rights to restrict the power of executive government. It considers the steps necessary to prevent the continued decline of political standards, arguing that only through rebalancing political power can civil liberties be adequately protected.

Relying on extensive new research of inaccessible sources, the book examines the major battlegrounds over civil liberties under New Labour, including the growth and abuse of police power, state surveillance and counter-terrorist measures. It unfolds a compelling narrative of the major battles fought before Parliament and in the courts, and attacks the failure of the political and legal systems to offer protection to those suffering abuses of their civil liberty at the hands of an aggressive Executive. In doing so, it offers a definitive account of the struggle for civil liberty in modern Britain, and a controversial argument for the reforms necessary to contain executive power.

I read this book while doing some writing recently, but intend to revisit it because many of my discomforts and reactions to it were brought back to the forefront of my mind by Fenwick’s review. I also recommend reading the review, simply for the purposes of balance. Ewing’s book is an interesting and engaging read, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. Indeed, monographs rarely do: usually there is an argument to be advanced and the material is to some extent crafted in order to support that argument. In Ewing’s case his argument is coupled with an engaging but also acerbic rhetorical style that adds to the reading experience but sometimes hides the more complex story behind the version of events being represented. In her review, Fenwick tries to bring these more complex readings to the fore in a manner that, although concise, is also engaging.

But more interesting than the way that the book and the review speak to one another, is the way in which they both represent different strands of thinking about the Human Rights Act 1998 in the UK. On the one hand is Ewing; a sceptic about the power and potential of the Act and famous for his conclusion that as a piece of transformative legislation it is ultimately futile in facilitating the true realisation of rights (see these three articles: Public Law, Bracton Law Journal, and Public Law again) . On the other hand is Fenwick who I think it would be fair to say is a promoter of the Human Rights Act 1998. While recognising and pointing out its limitations, Fenwick is generally complimentary about the potential (and realisation) of the Act (see especially her excellent tome on Civil Liberties and Human Rights now in its 4th edition (2007, Routledge)).

Reading Bonfire of the Liberties and its review by Fenwick together, then, presents one with a more rounded and interesting picture; one that shows the complexities of rights-based litigation and of assessing its worth both for individual litigants and in a more systematic manner. It is also a microcosm of the interesting and enlivening academic engagement about the value and potentiality of the Human Rights Act 1998.