Help me find the 50 human rights cases absolutely everyone needs to know about

Followers of the blog will know I am developing a new initiative, the Human Rights Information Project (HRIP). The aim is to radically rethink the way we communicate about human rights.

I need some help from you. I want to crowd-source data from readers of this blog about the 50 human rights cases absolutely everyone needs to know about. All contributors  will be attributed on the HRIP site and I will publish the text of the best nominations.

This data is going to be a central the project so I would really appreciate you taking the time to help out.

Here are the criteria:

• Each case must either be a domestic case (that is, one decided by a UK court) or a European Court of Human Rights case that involves the UK or has had a significant impact on the UK. The case can be 2 days or 30 years old.

• The focus must be on cases which have had a profound impact on people in the UK – the cases which you would mention first if you were explaining the importance of human rights to someone who knows nothing about the concept.

• Don’t worry if you don’t have legal expertise or are just starting out as a law student. I want to capture as broad a range of nominations as possible, and that includes from lawyers and academics with different specialisms, e.g. housing law, mental health, prison law etc.

• I would also be happy to accept nominations from groups of people or organisations.

Here is how to submit your nominations:

• You can submit as few as one or as many as 50 nominated cases. Please try to nominate at least 10 if you can.

• Name the case and its date (ideally using its full citation and a link to BAILII, e.g. Smith v Secretary of State for Justice [2015] EWHC 1234 (Admin) – you can find the citations at the top of the case report on BAILII)

• Each nominated case should be accompanied by a short rationale (no more than 50 words per case). Try the keep it simple – as if you were explaining the case to someone who doesn’t know anything about human rights.

• List the nominated cases in order of importance (with number 1 being the most important).

• Start the email with a one-line biography (e.g. “I am a law student at Birmingham University”)

• All nominations must be submitted by email to humanrightsinformationproject@gmail.com by 5pm on Friday 27th February 2015 – please use the subject heading “50 cases – [your name]”

I really appreciate the help. I will publish the results on this blog and of course on the new HRIP site, which is shaping up very nicely – launch is going to be this Spring. Follow @rights_info on Twitter to keep posted.