Article 8 ECHR, Family Reunification and the UK’s Supreme Court : Family Matters?

This book focuses on a series of judgments by the UK’s Supreme Court on the application of the right to respect for family life, contained in article 8 ECHR, to immigration decisions. These judgments have required the government to amend several aspects of its family migration policy and have become the centre of legal and political controversy, raising questions about the judicial function in a modern democracy, the influence on the legal system of European human rights law and the difficulties of controlling immigration in a globalised world. They have drawn judges into new territory and there is evidence that the senior judiciary is itself divided. Meanwhile, attempts by the government to reverse these judgments through rule changes and legislative amendment have added new layers to an already complex legal framework. In so doing, the book explains why the relationship between Article 8 and immigration is so legally and political complicated.

How do courts reconcile protecting family life with immigration control in human rights cases? This book addresses that question through an analysis of 11 UK Supreme Court decisions on immigration and family life, mostly focusing on Article 8 ECHR, the right to respect for family life, and starting with Huang v SSHD in 2007. The analysis is set against a national context that includes the Human Rights Act 1998 and regular controversies over immigration. The book explains how the European Court of Human Rights jurisprudence has developed in recent years, but, particularly in the absence of children, it often still awards little weight to claims by citizens and residents to be joined by family when immigration status is an issue. This reflects governments’ resistance to encroachment on their control over borders. The Supreme Court decisions show that, despite powers conferred by the Human Rights Act, a more nuanced position in domestic law was difficult to articulate and sustain. The book explores the way in which these problems were reflected in the changing language, argumentation, and structure of judgments. These problems revealed judges to be strategic actors drawing on personal and institutional values and responding to the shifting political context. A more generous reading of Article 8 would be legally coherent but needs wider societal support to be realisable. The book ends with a discussion of how, if such support were present, the jurisprudence could give more weight to the needs of families. It is vital reading for anyone interested in families and immigration, and in the problems and potential of human rights adjudication.