50 years of our right to apply to Strasbourg

The Centre of European Law in The Dickson Poon School of Law hosted a conference on 14 January to mark the 50th anniversary of the UK’s decision to allow people living in the UK to take cases to the European Court of Human Rights.

The conference, which was organised by Professor Robert Wintemute, brought together a wide range of speakers to discuss whether UK citizens’ right to apply to Strasbourg should be preserved. Speakers offered perspectives from civil society, from the UK Parliament and from academia.

Speakers included: Sir Nicolas Bratza, Member of the European Commission of Human Rights (1993-98), Judge (1998-2012) and President (2011-12) of the European Court of Human Rights; Lord Anthony Lester QC, counsel to the UK's first applicants to Strasbourg; Dominic Grieve QC MP, former Attorney General; Keir Starmer QC MP, former Director of Public Prosecutions; Shami Chakrabarti, Director of Liberty (National Council for Civil Liberties).

Follow the event on Storify

See all photos from the event on our Flickr account.

Read Sir Nicolas Bratza’s welcome in full (pdf)

Find out more about the Centre of European Law on our webpages.