R V HORNCASTLE AND ANOTHER

R V Horncastle and Another

R V Horncastle and Another

Introduction

The case “R v Horncastle & Others (2009) UKSC 14” is marked as one of the important judgmental case of the United Kingdom's Supreme Court related to hearsay evidence. This case is compatible with UK hearsay law with the right to a fair trial under Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Right (ECHR). R v Horncastle & Others signifies another stage in the judges dialogue between the higher courts of the United Kingdom and European Court of Human Rights about whether is accepted to ground sentences "solely or to a decisive extent" on evidence made by a witness who is identified but does not appear in court (Lamb & Katz 2011, 292).

Case Notes

Background

Several times, the Court, has stressed that the ECHR emphasized "as a product of interpretation" that comes from the Strasbourg Court, even if the rulings of this Court "are not absolutely binding" in order to control constitutionality of federal laws, it is also true that the constitutionality of the ballot must take place in order to check "if indeed there is a conflict not be resolved through interpretation of the contested provisions and standards of the ECHR as interpreted by the European Court".

Significant objections to this approach (designed to be reflected also on the scope of interpretive discretion of the judge inside, squeezing) were made, not surprisingly, judges, made up of contributions that have highlighted the need for the state court deviates, if necessary, by the previous Court of Human Rights, highlighting the contrasts often characterize the same law and, therefore, paying attention to dissenting opinions or type of majority from time to time in the decisions reached (Keane & McKeown 2010, 296 - 313).

Neither the result of judicial rulings "twin" of 2007 seems to correct the shot significantly, although the latter system has hardly been surpassed by the Court and, where the constitutional court has been providing solutions rather than autonomous interpretation those of the Strasbourg Court, it did so because it lacked a ruling by adhering to the concrete case. Outside of these cases, the Court emphasized that its interpretation (and that of the ordinary courts) cannot replace the one proposed by the court in Strasbourg.

This seems at odds not only with internal independence posed by the Italian Constitution (especially through the Arts. 101, and 107 c.2, c.3) but also with the position of the Strasbourg Court itself, which looks to the court National "as essential to their own way as the mechanism that governs the relationship between subsidiary and national and ECHR."

This observation is of utmost importance, was effectively confirmed by recent Supreme Court ruling given by the English, established in 2005. This case helps to understand how the obligation to comply with the ECHR, and the interpretation that gives the ECHR does not mean at all that the judge should uncritically flattened on internal solutions produced by the hermeneutics of Strasbourg, he could, however, carve out a space interpretation ...