The Northern Ireland Assembly and Human Rights Protections: Legislative Competence and Rights based Scrutiny in a Power-sharing Executive and Assembly

The Northern Ireland Act 1998 restricts the Assembly to its ‘legislative competence’ and places human rights scrutiny obligations on Ministers, the Speaker, and the Attorney General. Northern Ireland represents a paradoxical case: while it contains an advanced human rights architecture, the Assembly has yet to produce a human rights agenda. This paper has 3 main objectives to analyze this paradox. First, to conduct an assessment of the human rights architecture within the Executive and Assembly. Second, to establish Northern Ireland ‘exceptionalism’ within the Commonwealth model of rights protection. This is the result of consociational principles that structure the Assembly and Executive. Third, to demonstrate that, while the Northern Ireland model is exceptional, the dynamics of a power-sharing executive have resulted in a legislative agenda devoid of substantive human rights issues. This is the result of veto points generated by consociational instruments such as the petition of concern that filter out ‘hard’ questions of public policy and reduce Executive Bills to matters on which broad cross-community support exists. The paper concludes with suggested reforms of the Assembly to correct this paradox. This paper focuses on the political practices of a power-sharing executive, and how consociational principles constrain the Assembly’s legislative output.