 So, the foreign terrorist suspects who have been detained in Belmarsh prison won their case, right? Well, yes and no. They certainly got the court to agree with their view that the legislation which allowed indefinite detention without charge or trial was incompatible with their human rights. It was always clear that such detention briefed the right to liberty, which is why the government argued that that right had been lawfully suspended via the get-out clause in Article 15 of the European Convention. But as we've seen, one of the conditions in Article 15 was held not to have been satisfied. That meant that the right to liberty had not been suspended, and that in turn meant that the Anti-Terrorism Act was incompatible with that still effective right. So why the hesitation of a saying that the detainees won their case? The detainees won a moral victory that caused a greed that their human rights were being breached, but they didn't walk free from prison, at least not right away. Why? Because the detention of the suspects was provided for in an act of Parliament, and Parliament is sovereign. That means that there is no legal limit on the laws it can make. It has the legal authority to enact whatever laws it wishes. And if that's true, it follows that no one, including the courts, can overrule a law made by Parliament. Here then we encounter one of the most unusual features of the British constitution. Most countries have a written constitution. Written constitutions normally set out and limit the authority of the legislature or Parliament. And if the legislature makes laws beyond its authority, for example, laws that breach human rights protected by the constitution, then the courts can strike down or refuse to apply such laws. But in the UK we do not have that kind of constitution. There is no constitutional text that sets out and limits Parliament's authority. Instead, we regard Parliament as having the ultimate authority to make whatever laws it wishes. And because the British system works in that way, it was constitutionally impossible for the court in the Belmarsh case to overrule the act of Parliament providing the detention of the terror suspects, even though the act was found to be in breach of the fundamental right to liberty. It might seem, therefore, that there was no point to this case. Why bother going to court if the court cannot do anything to help you? In fact, the court could do something, even though it couldn't refuse to apply the law. The Human Rights Act tells court that they have to do all that is possible to interpret laws compatibly with fundamental rights contained in the European Convention. But if, as in this case, the law is irreconcilable with a given right, the Human Rights Act says that courts can issue a declaration of incompatibility. In one sense, the effect of this is limited or even non-existent. The Act very clearly says that a declaration of incompatibility does not invalidate or override the legislation to which it applies. So, when the court issued a declaration in the Belmarsh case, the Anti-Terrorism Act remained in force, and the foreign suspects remained imprisoned under us. But, in another sense, declarations of incompatibility are far more potent than they might seem at first. They send a clear and powerful signal to government, to parliament and to the public generally that UK law fails to adhere to the basic human rights standards that countries across Europe have agreed to be bound by. And that's important for two reasons. In the first place, it may well put great political pressure on the government and on parliament to amend the law, so as to fall into line with those human rights standards. And second, if that doesn't happen, there's always the option of taking the case to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. If that court finds a breach of the Convention, then the UK is obliged to accept its judgement, and it's obliged to change British law so that it conforms to the requirements of the Convention. That's the case because the UK has bound itself in international law by signing the European Convention, a treaty or agreement between nations, to respect the rights set out in the Convention. What this means then is that a weak-sounding declaration of incompatibility by a British Court is a signpost pointing towards something different altogether. If parliament does not accept the UK Court's invitation to change the law, then it's likely, some way down the line, to be required to do so by the European Court. And so, anticipating exactly that, parliament did change the law. Part four of the Enter Terrorism Act was repealed, and it was replaced with the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005. It provided for control orders to be imposed on all terrorist suspects, British and foreign. It raised human rights concerns of its own, but that's something for another day. For now, the point is that parliamentary sovereignty and the apparent weakness of declarations of incompatibility, notwithstanding, the right to the Belmarsh detainees ultimately prevailed. One of the things that interests me about public law is the way in which it lies at the intersection of both law and politics and national and international law. And the Belmarsh case and its aftermath can only be understood in that way. The detainees did not win a straightforward legal victory. As we've seen, they left court empty-handed, except for an apparently toothless declaration. Instead, their victory was partly won in the political arena. When the Supreme Court today, or the House of Lords as it was then, rules that UK law is incompatible with fundamental human rights, the effect is often to galvanise political debate. That was certainly true in the Belmarsh case, as the judgement heaped political pressure on politicians to change the law. But the potency of ad-actoration of incompatibility is also attributable, as I've explained, to the fact that it anticipates the possibility of a judgement by the European Court of Human Rights that would bind Britain in international law. In that way, the Human Rights Act operates as a bridge that means the UK is not a legal island. The UK's parliament might be sovereign, but the UK as a nation stays has chosen to play its part in the community of nations, including by signing up to international human rights standards. These are the sort of big picture questions that public law grapples with. But as the Belmarsh case shows, the big picture can have real and profound implications for the lives of individual people.