In recent years, UK courts have begun to allow third party interventions – applications by public bodies, private individuals or companies, or NGOs to make submissions which raise some issue of public importance.
JUSTICE has a long history of intervening in cases involving the protection of fundamental rights. Well before British courts began to allow third party interventions in the mid-90s, JUSTICE had established a practice of intervening in cases before the European Court of Human Rights.
The aim of our third party interventions is to assist the courts by providing an independent analysis of the human rights principles and standards at issue in a case, as well as any relevant international and comparative human rights law. Through our interventions, we seek to ensure that the courts have full regard to human rights principles and jurisprudence in appropriate cases. Over the years, JUSTICE has intervened in key human rights cases before the Court of Appeal, the House of Lords, the Privy Council, the European Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights. More recently, JUSTICE intervened in the first case heard by the then new UK Supreme Court in October 2009.
JUSTICE has also produced two publications as guides to the conduct of third party interventions in the public interest.
To Assist the Court Third Party Intervention in the Public Interest (2016)
To Assist the Court: Third Party Interventions in the UK (2009)