Dear Editor,
In its September issue, Evangelicals Now published David Shepherd’s thoughtful treatment of the pre-action letter, supported by the Christian Legal Centre, challenging the government’s handling of church closures. The article, entitled ‘Covid, the Courts and the Magna Carta’, essentially takes the position that the pre-action letter’s legal argument is flawed because ‘human rights jurisprudence has repeatedly recognised religious freedom as individual adherence to propositional belief, with less focus on freedom of religious practice’.
Without wishing to malign Mr Shepherd’s legal knowledge, it is important to first note that his argument about the jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the European Union post-Brexit is wholly misapplied. It is not the jurisprudence of that Court, which is located in Luxembourg and serves the EU, which informs the interpretation of the Human Rights Act 1998. It is instead the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, an organ of the Council of Europe, in which the UK remains post-Brexit, which applies.
