What is exactly is the human right's act in brief?

Question

What is exactly is the human right's act in brief?

Answer 1

The Human Rights Act 1998 is an Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom which received Royal Assent on November 9, 1998, and mostly came into force on October 2, 2000. Its aim is to "give further effect" in UK law to the rights contained in the European Convention on Human Rights. The Act makes available in UK courts a remedy for breach of a Convention right, without the need to go to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. It also totally abolished the death penalty in UK law (although this was not required by the Convention in force for the UK at that time).

In particular, the Act makes it unlawful for any public body to act in a way which is incompatible with the Convention, unless the wording of an Act of Parliament means they have no other choice. It also requires UK judges take account of decisions of the Strasbourg court, and to interpret legislation, as far as possible, in a way which is compatible with the Convention. However, if it is not possible to interpret an Act of Parliament so as to make it compatible with the Convention, the judges are not allowed to override it. All they can do is to issue a declaration of incompatibility. This declaration does not affect the validity of the Act of Parliament: in that way, the Human Rights Act seeks to maintain the principle of Parliamentary sovereignty (see: Constitution of the United Kingdom). An individual can still take his case to the Strasbourg court as a last resort. Hope thats brief enough?

Answer 2

The power of the movement for human rights-a movement that until recently was located for most people on the edge of the ridiculous-can no longer be denied. Abetted by both the "rights revolution" and the increasingly powerful environmental cause,  defenders of humans have more and more turned from speech to harassing and punitive actions-picketing and boycotting offending businesses...

In keeping with the manners of this rebelliousness, public insult has become the order of the day. At best the language of argument is patronizing and contemptuous, at worst downright nasty. Opponents of the movement have been called "vestigial, all who are left over from the cave, who . . . threaten to contaminate the future of mankind . . . with the stink and rot of pain and terror glorified"

To be sure, invective is not all one way: scorn and ridicule are prominent among the weapons used.  

Even the presuppositions of the argument are called into question, for Humanity is finally a dispensable species: ultimate value is assigned to the whole process of nature rather than any special part of it. We have been, it is said. At the very least we must see ourselves as a part of the whole no better than the other who have moral equivalence with us.

We human beings are not necessary to nature, which would be better off without us.

There can be no doubt that the difference between the mind of the lowest man and that of the highest. . . .

As evidence of the difference he cites tool making, solving mathematical problems, metaphysical reasoning, and "disinterested love for all creatures." As evidence of similarity he suggests common possession of senses, emotions, and intuitions like love, memory, attention, curiosity, imitation, and even a bare-faced-and morally indefensible-preference for members of our own species . . . exactly the kind of arbitrary difference that the most crude and overt kind of racist uses in attempting to justify racial discrimination.

The argument from marginal humans is an important one. Perhaps we may reply that mentally incapacitated people do in fact lose certain rights, although this loss ought to be strictly limited to the exercise of those faculties that have been destroyed by the disease. But they are protected from further loss, from being turned into mere things, available for such use (e.g., medical experimentation) as we may choose, because they are members of a rational species, even though they themselves have "lost their wits." They are afforded generalized protection because they possess, however vestigially, those characteristics that make them human. Protecting them is important to protecting all of us from abuse, should we fall into perilous circumstances, medical, political, or even criminal  is a way of defending our species against self-destruction.

Because clear moral lines cannot be drawn between categories of living things, might easily reduce the claims for Here is a prime example of a confusion between legal and moral rights. Moral rights are claims even against the law, claims that the law must honor. We may award animals legal rights for our own human purposes without conceding to them moral rights against our laws. Moreover, having an interest does not produce a moral right. We have an interest in not having our feelings hurt, but no consequent right to be spared criticism. And merely having a good can hardly produce a right to it in the lowest forms of life or in inanimate objects, as most of us recognize intuitively. Among human beings, rights imply reciprocal obligations or responsibilities. The point remains that it is an improper use of terms to speak of rights outside of human relations. We do not know anything about animal rights; the term is meaningless to us. Value terms like rights cannot be weighed between species that cannot communicate. It is not much easier, however, there is no reason to suppose that sportsmen are insincere in thinking they do more good than harm to wild populations as a whole.