Strasbourg’s Open Door to Normalisation in National Security Adjudication

Abstract The paper argues that the adjudicative approach of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) to key United Kingdom national security matters has created an open door to the normalisation of expanding national security measures in the UK and beyond. Normalisation is a process in which supposedly exceptional national security measures, first billed as temporary or targeted to a limited set of circumstances, become either permanent or significantly more widespread features of a legal system. In examining the precise mechanisms by which normalisation has been supported at the level of ECtHR review, this paper assesses three specific areas of UK national security law. These areas are surveillance law, deportation on national security grounds, and derogating counter-terrorism measures. In these areas, the ECtHR’s adoption of what the paper refers to as a ‘covert box-ticking’ adjudicative approach in key cases is what has helped to create an open door to normalisation.