Human Rights and English Law Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Human Rights and English Law - Essay Example As the paper declares our formulation of the function of the criminal law so far as it concerns the subject of this inquiry . . . is to preserve public order and decency, to protect the citizen from what is offensive or injurious, and to provide sufficient safeguards against exploitation and corruption of others, particularly those who are specially vulnerable because they are young, weak in body or mind, inexperienced, or in a state of special physical, official or economic dependence. It is not, in our view, the function of the law to intervene in the private lives of citizens, or to seek to enforce any particular patter of behaviour, further than is necessary to carry out the purposes we have outlined. From this paper it is clear that the committee report sparked the furious Devlin4-Hart5 debate and educated the public of the need for open-mindedness and clarity of reasoning resulting on the clarification of the problems or issues of homosexuality and prostitution, clearly positivist inputs. What previously has been the undoubted mechanism to enforce social morality, criminal law is being hedged out from private behaviour that does not harm other people; a concept that derived its roots from JS Mill's harm principle. The committee recommendation that "homosexual behaviour between consenting adults in private should no longer be a criminal offence," specifically between men over the age of 21, except in the armed forces, led to the passage of the 1967 Sexual Offences Act which replaced the 1861 Offences against Persons Act, the previous law against homosexuality and paved the way to legalizing homosexuality except for some homosexual acts. The age of consent for homosexual men was reduced in 1994 to 18 and in 2001 to 16 while homosexual acts in the armed forces were decriminalised. In May 2003 the Sexual Offences Act 2003 came into force, repealing the sexual offences of buggery and gross indecency and criminalised sexual behaviour that a person knew or ought to have known was likely to cause distress, alarm or offence to others in a public place, including sexual activity in public cruising and 'dogging' areas. The new act consolidated five previous statutes, particularly the Criminal Law Amendm ent Act 1885, Vagrants Act 1898, Incest Act 1908, Criminal Amendment Act 1912, and Criminal Amendment Act 1922 and further driven by public concern over children. The 1885 act repealed the Contagious Diseases Acts (1864, 1866 and 1869) directed against prostitution.