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This paper seeks to deal, from a legal rather than a political perspective, with one of the more curious phenomena associated with the United Kingdom's Human Rights Act 1998 (the text of which can be found at http://www.hmso.gov.uk): namely the fact that, while supporters and opponents of the Act have often conducted debates about its normative desirability or practical consequences on the (inaccurate) assumption that it has a 'radical' or 'revolutionary' effect within the domestic legal system, in practice its impact to date has merely been evolutionary. The paper seeks to explain the practical effect and the constitutional status of the Act to date, and does so by suggesting that - despite the political rhetoric - it in fact fits within the logic of the common law legal system of which it forms a part, and either replicates pre-existing norms or fails to resolve continuing constitutional debates within that system. We cannot rule out the possibility that courts may in the future seek to find constitutionally novel answers in difficult Human Rights Act cases, but this possibility is itself inherent within the long-standing analytical and normative uncertainties of English constitutional law.
