A forthcoming legal judgment on the Legacy Act could have significant implications for the protection of human rights in Northern Ireland, the director of a social change organisation has said.
The Court of Appeal is expected to rule later this week on a UK government challenge to a High Court judgment that the legacy laws breached elements of the post-Brexit arrangements for Northern Ireland – the Windsor Framework.
The Belfast-based Social Change Initiative (SCI) said the ruling could have implications far beyond legacy issues.
The Labour government announced in the summer it was dropping an appeal against part of the High Court judgment that struck out controversial aspects of the previous administration’s Troubles legacy laws.
But it did not abandon its wider appeal, asking the court to rule on part of its legal challenge involving concerns around EU laws and the Windsor Framework.
Article 2 (1) of the Windsor Framework states that the Government must ensure that various rights entitlements in Northern Ireland, which were enshrined following the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, cannot be diminished as a result of the UK leaving the EU.
The Northern Ireland Secretary Hilary Benn has cited the need for clarity in relation to how that ruling could potentially affect other UK government legislation in the future.
He has said the ongoing appeal related to a “technical point of law”, which he hoped could be clarified to ensure “legal certainty” around the human rights framework in Northern Ireland.
The SCI, working in conjunction with the Human Rights Centre at Queen’s University Belfast and the Donia Human Rights Centre at the University of Michigan, has produced a guide to the issues at stake in the court ruling.
Martin O’Brien, director at the SCI said: “The forthcoming judgment in the Legacy Act case will determine whether the commitment to ensure that Brexit does not lead to any diminution in the human rights and equality protections of the Good Friday Agreement has any real substance.
“We hope our report will help everyone to get to grips with the complex legal issues that the case will decide, and why they matter to us all.”
The Irish Centre for European Law, the SCI and the Human Rights Centre at Queen’s University Belfast are also organising a seminar to discuss the implications of the Court of Appeal’s judgment.
The event will take place on October 24th at Queen’s when a panel of legal experts will assess the judgment and its implications.
