Maxwell-Fyfe was a good barrister, his performance at Nuremberg was much better than that of the Americans, but he wasn't exactly amongst the brightest and best lawyers. /2 - ThreadSky

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spinninghugo.bsky.social • 9 days ago

Maxwell-Fyfe was a good barrister, his performance at Nuremberg was much better than that of the Americans, but he wasn't exactly amongst the brightest and best lawyers.

/2

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spinninghugo.bsky.social•9 days ago

Lauterpacht had far more impact on the draft that eventuated, as did (somewhat embarrassingly) earlier European constitutional documents (as is apparent from the text).

/3

spinninghugo.bsky.social•9 days ago

The reason for the (mild) support of the Tories at the time was they thought that UK law was obviously compliant anyway, and so nothing to see, the text was just a political document, and a useful way of creating a distinction from the Soviet Union.

/4

spinninghugo.bsky.social•9 days ago

It isn't a coincidence that the collapse of support for the ECHR on the Tory right coincided with the collapse of the Berlin wall. The geopolitical justification for it was gone in their eyes.

/5

spinninghugo.bsky.social•9 days ago

Focussing on Maxwell -Fyfe is misleading in another way. Because he was a prosecutor at Nuremberg, the impression gets created that what drove the agreement for the ECHR was the holocaust, and a UK desire to stop it happening again.

/6

spinninghugo.bsky.social•9 days ago

But that too isn't supported by the history of the drafting.

/Ends

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