The State Immunity Act 1978 is an Act of the

Parliament of the United Kingdom The Parliament of the United Kingdom is the supreme legislative body of the United Kingdom, the Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories. It meets at the Palace of Westminster, London. It alone possesses legislative suprema ...

which was passed to implement the European Convention on State Immunity of 1972 into British law. The doctrine of absolute

state immunity The doctrine and rules of state immunity concern the protection which a state is given from being sued in the courts of other states. The rules relate to legal proceedings in the courts of another state, not in a state's own courts. The rules devel ...

was changed to one of restricted immunity, whereby a foreign state could be sued in the British

court A court is any person or institution, often as a government institution, with the authority to adjudicate legal disputes between parties and carry out the administration of justice in civil, criminal, and administrative matters in accordance ...

s for some certain activities, usually of a commercial nature. In 1998 the defence attempted to use it during

Augusto Pinochet's arrest and trial General Augusto Pinochet was indicted for human rights violations committed in his native Chile by Spanish magistrate Baltasar Garzón on 10 October 1998. He was arrested in London six days later and held on house arrest for a year and a half be ...

, but

Lord Nicholls Donald James Nicholls, Baron Nicholls of Birkenhead, (25 January 1933 – 25 September 2019) was a British barrister who became a Law Lord (Lord of Appeal in Ordinary). Biography Nicholls was educated at Birkenhead School, before reading ...

said that the Act flouted a battery of international legislation on human rights abuses to which Britain is a signatory, and would have meant, according to the arguments of Pinochet's legal team, that British law would have protected even Adolf Hitler. In June 2006 the law was used to dismiss an appeal by three

Briton British people or Britons, also known colloquially as Brits, are the citizens of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the British Overseas Territories, and the Crown dependencies.: British nationality law governs mod ...

s (

Sandy Mitchell Sandy Mitchell may refer to: * Sandy Mitchell (prisoner) * Sandy Mitchell (novelist) * Sandy Mitchell (racing driver) Sandy Mitchell (born 7 March 2000) is a British racing driver who currently competes in the British GT Championship and GT Wo ...

, Les Walker and Ron Jones) and a

Canadian Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...

( William Sampson) who were convicted and imprisoned for

car bomb A car bomb, bus bomb, lorry bomb, or truck bomb, also known as a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device (VBIED), is an improvised explosive device designed to be detonated in an automobile or other vehicles. Car bombs can be roughly divided ...

ings and illicit alcohol trading in

Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is a country in Western Asia. It covers the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and has a land area of about , making it the fifth-largest country in Asia, the second-largest in the A ...

. The

Law Lords Lords of Appeal in Ordinary, commonly known as Law Lords, were judges appointed under the Appellate Jurisdiction Act 1876 to the British House of Lords, as a committee of the House, effectively to exercise the judicial functions of the House of ...

upheld an appeal by the government of Saudi Arabia against the four men who wished to sue the Saudi government for damages relating to alleged

torture Torture is the deliberate infliction of severe pain or suffering on a person for reasons such as punishment, extracting a confession, interrogation for information, or intimidating third parties. Some definitions are restricted to acts c ...

. Despite the ruling, the four continue to maintain that they were mistreated by Saudi officials both before and after they were jailed in November 2000. They were released from prison in 2003 on

royal pardon In the English and British tradition, the royal prerogative of mercy is one of the historic royal prerogatives of the British monarch, by which they can grant pardons (informally known as a royal pardon) to convicted persons. The royal preroga ...

. In 2017 the Court of Appeal held that the employment rights of two Sudanese embassy workers were within the scope of the EU-derived Working Time Regulations; a decision subsequently affirmed by the Supreme Court at UKSC 62. Under UK domestic law, sections 4 and 16 the State Immunity Act 1978 should have operated to protect the embassies’ immunity from actions arising from contracts of employment, thus barring the employees' claims. However, once it was established that the matter fell within EU law, Article 47 of the Charter, granting the

right to a fair trial A fair trial is a trial which is "conducted fairly, justly, and with procedural regularity by an impartial judge". Various rights associated with a fair trial are explicitly proclaimed in Article 10 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, th ...

, gave the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court the power to 'protect' that right to the extent of overriding the inconsistent provisions of the 1978 Act.

References

External links

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Summary of important sections of the Act

Sovereign immunity United Kingdom Acts of Parliament 1978 {{UK-statute-stub