User:Wyndham Freeman/Parliamentary Sovereignty in the United Kingdom

Section 3 of the Human Rights Act 1998 requires UK courts to practice "reading down" in order to apply national law consistently with the European Convention on Human Rights. "Reading down" is a practice in law, by which the judge first assumes that a law complies with the constitution, and thereafter finds an interpretation of the law which is "sufficiently narrow" so as to be constitutional. It is usually practiced on laws which are written in extremely broad or all-encompassing ways. The principle of reading down aims to preserve parliamentary sovereignty by minimizing conflicts between UK law and the ECHR, without allowing the courts to strike down primary legislation. Legislation can be found to be incompatible, if reading down is impossible or would effectively change the legislation itself. If legislation is found to be incompatible even after reading down, the court will issue a "declaration of incompatibility," which is non-binding upon parliament. However, legislation declared incompatible is almost always amended by parliament.