Vertical effect refers to, in English law, the way in which the Human Rights Act impacts on the relationship between individual citizens and the state. The Human Rights Act states that the Act applies to public bodies meaning that any citizens satisfying the test for standing can fight a case based upon a breach of a Convention right.
In recent times there has been some debate as to whether the Human Rights Act can also have horizontal effect as well.
Famous quotes containing the words vertical and/or effect:
“In bourgeois society, the French and the industrial revolution transformed the authorization of political space. The political revolution put an end to the formalized hierarchy of the ancien regimé.... Concurrently, the industrial revolution subverted the social hierarchy upon which the old political space was based. It transformed the experience of society from one of vertical hierarchy to one of horizontal class stratification.”
—Donald M. Lowe, U.S. historian, educator. History of Bourgeois Perception, ch. 4, University of Chicago Press (1982)
“The sensation of seeing extremely fine women, with superb forms, perfectly unconscious of undress, and yet evidently aware of their beauty and dignity, is worth a week’s seasickness to experience.... To me the effect [of a Siva dance] was that of a dozen Rembrandts intensified into the most glowing beauty of life and motion.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)