Ограничења правног регулисања екстремизације деснице у Великој Британији
Limitations To The Legal Regulation Of The Extreme Right In Great Britain

Summary/Abstract: The paper addresses the rise in extreme-right sentiments in Great Britain that, phenomenologically, reached its climax in the August 2011 street riots across the country, and discusses briefly the political climate that has led to such outbursts of intolerance on the one hand, and the limited tools available to the British law-makers to counter the trend, on the other. The key thesis of this short paper is that the British parliamentarians have no feasible way to legislate against the demonstrations of the extreme right, not just because this would be a chancy approach with regard to the delimitations of civil rights, including the collective right to publicly articulate political opinions, but also because of the deep-seated features of the British law. Namely, the British legal system is much more subject to creative interpretation by the judges than is the case with European law, and especially more so than is the case with the Soviet legacy of strictly positivistic legal systems such as those across Eastern Europe. This means that legislating so as to curb the public manifestations of extreme right sentiments could backfire through court proceedings that could turn into discussions of civil liberties and where judges might refuse to tow the positivistic normative line of the law in favour of a broader interpretation of rights and liberties. While, on the surface, such a limitation of legal regulation might seem disappointing to those fond of social control, it reflects a deep-running democratic trait in the British legal system that does not allow legal regulation to move beyond its proper place in society, and that is to be the articulation of the existing values and principles that the community shares with a sufficient degree of consensus.

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