London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Thursday, Sep 04, 2025

Meghan Markle and the trouble with human rights law

Meghan Markle and the trouble with human rights law

Meghan Markle hailed her victory in a high court privacy case as a 'comprehensive win' over the Mail on Sunday’s 'illegal and dehumanising practices'. But is that right? If you dig beneath the headlines and read the judge's ruling, it becomes clear that her victory has much to do with a burgeoning expansion of privacy rights based on human rights law. This change in the law has taken place with little fanfare and the victim – the press – generate little sympathy. Yet it is something that should worry any supporter of free speech.

Until about twenty years ago, the English courts were pretty robust about celebrities’ privacy suits, then known as actions for breach of confidence. A typical example was a 1977 episode where a well-known pop group indignantly sought to stop the Daily Mirror spilling the beans about their private high jinks. A Court of Appeal judge tersely told them that even if someone was breaking confidence, high-living celebrities like them who sought the limelight and courted good publicity could not generally complain if someone publicised less complimentary facts about them.

So what has changed? The explanation here lies fairly squarely with human rights activism. As early as 1970, the Council of Europe, the body behind the European court of human rights, had passed Resolution 428 saying that the human right to privacy needed to be put to work to curb what it clearly saw as a vulgar and unsavoury mass media.

This should trouble anyone with a concern for a free press
By 2004, the court had enthusiastically taken the hint. It decided that Princess Caroline of Monaco had a human right to suppress paparazzo photographs of her in public places, sniffily adding that free speech was all very well, but not really for publications 'of which the sole purpose was to satisfy the curiosity of a particular readership' about a person in the public eye.

What the European court initiated, the English courts happily adopted. From then on they decided that any information could be suppressed which someone had a reasonable expectation would be kept private (whatever that meant). Celebrities’ privacy actions became simply an exercise in deciding whether this was so, and then asking (in the words of the judge in the Meghan case) 'whether in all the circumstances the privacy rights of the claimant must yield to the imperatives of the freedom of expression enjoyed by publishers'. The vital point (again in his words) was whether there was a 'contribution which the publication of the relevant information would make to a debate of general interest'.

And so, we come to the result in Meghan’s claim against the Mail on Sunday. The judge there excoriated the old robust approach to newspaper exposés as an obviously outdated 'crude common law principle'. Today what mattered was the new human-rights-based sophistication. Here, since Meghan understandably hoped that her letter to her father would never be revealed, and there was no sufficiently high-minded addition to public debate to justify publicising it, she had to win.

We should not criticise the judge for deciding as he did; he was loyally applying the law as it is now. Nor is the result reached necessarily misguided. It is certainly arguable, even if most Spectator readers are likely to disagree, that people – including celebrities – ought to have an extensive right to privacy and the press a correspondingly narrow right to inform its readers about their inner lives.

But the important point here lies in the word 'arguable'. It is this which demonstrates the problem arising from the fact that almost all press privacy questions have now been deftly transmuted into human rights cases. The essence of human rights claims is precisely that they are not arguable in this sense. To call a right a human right is to say it is so important that no state can deny it and still be called civilised, and that therefore it needs to be taken out of the democratic political process and entrusted to supranational institutions like the European court.

There is no reason, however, to think that privacy claims such as Meghan’s fall into this category. Indeed there is every reason to think they are not: it is perfectly possible for a civilised state to support either a wide or a narrow definition of privacy. The choice between them is a vital question of social policy. The proper place for the matter to be decided is in the democratic political sphere. If human rights law requires that privacy be preferred over press freedom whatever the voters think, then this should trouble anyone with a concern for a free press.

Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
Putin Celebrates ‘Unprecedentedly High’ Ties with China as Gazprom Seals Power of Siberia-2 Deal
China Unveils New Weapons in Grand Military Parade as Xi Hosts Putin and Kim
Queen Camilla’s Teenage Courage: Fended Off Attempted Assault on London Train, New Biography Reveals
Scottish Brothers Set Record in Historic Pacific Row
Rapper Cardi B Cleared of Liability in Los Angeles Civil Assault Trial
Google Avoids Break-Up in U.S. Antitrust Case as Stocks Rise
Couple celebrates 80th wedding anniversary at assisted living facility in Lancaster
Information Warfare in the Age of AI: How Language Models Become Targets and Tools
The White House on LinkedIn Has Changed Their Profile Picture to Donald Trump
"Insulted the Prophet Muhammad": Woman Burned Alive by Angry Mob in Niger State, Nigeria
Trump Responds to Death Rumors – Announces 'Missile City'
Court of Appeal Allows Asylum Seekers to Remain at Essex Hotel Amid Local Tax Boycott Threats
Germany in Turmoil: Ukrainian Teenage Girl Pushed to Death by Illegal Iraqi Migrant
United Krack down on human rights: Graham Linehan Arrested at Heathrow Over Three X Posts, Hospitalised, Released on Bail with Posting Ban
Asian and Middle Eastern Investors Avoid US Markets
Ray Dalio Warns of US Shift to Autocracy
Eurozone Inflation Rises to 2.1% in August
Russia and China Sign New Gas Pipeline Deal
China's Robotics Industry Fuels Export Surge
Suntory Chairman Resigns After Police Probe
Gold Price Hits New All-Time Record
Von der Leyen's Plane Hit by Suspected Russian GPS Interference in an Incident Believed to Be Caused by Russia or by Pro-Peace or by Anti-Corruption European Activists
UK Fintechs Explore Buying US Banks
Greece Suspends 5% of Schools as Birth Rate Drops
Apollo to Launch $5 Billion Sports Investment Vehicle
Bolsonaro Trial Nears Close Amid US-Brazil Tension
European Banks Push for Lower Cross-Border Barriers
Poland's Offshore Wind Sector Attracts Investors
Nvidia Reveals: Two Mystery Customers Account for About 40% of Revenue
Woody Allen: "I Would Be Happy to Direct Trump Again in a Film"
Pickles are the latest craze among Generation Z in the United States.
Deadline Day Delivers Record £125m Isak Move and Donnarumma to City
Nestlé Removes CEO Laurent Freixe Following Undisclosed Relationship with Subordinate
Giuliani Seriously Injured in Accident – Trump to Award Him the Presidential Medal of Freedom
EU is getting aggressive: Four AfD Candidates Die Unexpectedly Ahead of North Rhine-Westphalia Local Elections
Lula and Putin Hold Strategic BRICS Discussions Ahead of Trump–Putin Summit
WhatsApp is rolling out a feature that looks a lot like Telegram.
Investigations Reveal Rise in ‘Sex-for-Rent’ Listings Across Canada Exploiting Vulnerable Tenants
Chinese and Indian Leaders Pursue Amity Amid Global Shifts
European Union Plans for Ukraine Deployment
ECB Warns Against Inflation Complacency
Concerns Over North Cyprus Casino Development
Shipping Companies Look Beyond Chinese Finance
Rural Exodus Fueling European Wildfires
China Hosts Major Security Meeting
Chinese Police Successfully Recover Family's Savings from Livestream Purchases
Germany Marks a Decade Since Migrant Wave with Divisions, Success Stories, and Political Shifts
Liverpool Defeat Arsenal 1–0 with Szoboszlai Free-Kick to Stay Top of Premier League
Prince Harry and King Charles to Meet in First Reunion After 20 Months
Chinese Stock Market Rally Fueled by Domestic Investors
×