Brexit and Rights Protection in the United Kingdom

The book is about how Brexit has and is likely to impact the UK’s protection of rights. In analysing the multi-layered framework of institutions that has provided this protection, Solomon contributes to our understanding of how this critical juncture has disrupted the human rights regime developed under the EU, its limits, and the kind of associative posture the UK will likely adopt towards the EU in the post-Brexit era.

This study adopts a historical institutional approach that evaluates the extent of post-Brexit UK’s divergence from the EU in the protection of rights against a history of EU legal embeddedness in both UK law and established institutional arrangements. With Brexit’s removal of the EU’s legal constraints, including the protection of certain substantive and procedural rights, came opportunities for a new legislative framework which has served to centralise the UK’s government’s power, minimise parliamentary and judicial scrutiny, and further dilute some rights protections. The book will assess the tension between these Brexit-induced developments and those remaining institutions and norms as derived from both the experience of the EU’s legal entrenchment and the UK’s own earlier reforms, including the Human Rights Act and the devolution settlements. This institutional contest will help address the question of whether post-Brexit UK, in seeking a rebalancing of its legal and political institutions, has successfully embarked on a new legal and policy pathway.

The question of rights protection after treaty withdrawal is a significant issue, both inside and outside academic study. It will particularly interest researchers in UK public law, UK/EU human rights law, and comparative constitutional law.