A rock and a hard place

This article is concerned with the developing jurisprudence of the right to life under Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Right since the Murder on the Rock case.1 In particular, this article considers how the European Court of Human Rights scrutinises police lethal force cases in comparison with military lethal force case in light of the recent fatal shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes on the London Underground by British police. The first part of the article considers the background to this shooting; the requirements of Article 2; and the seminal case of McCann and Others v United Kingdom,2 that instigated the development of Article 2 in this area of law. The second part of the article considers how those principles developed in the Murder on the Rock case have been applied and construed in subsequent military and police lethal force cases, and explores the rationalisation for any discrepancies in the approach of the Court

Human rights · Law and economics · Political science · Right to life · Scrutiny · Sociology · European and International Law Studies · Human Rights and Development · Law