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O’HALLORAN AND FRANCIS v. THE UNITED KINGDOM JUDGMENT –
CONCURRING OPINION OF JUDGE BORREGO BORRGEO
used was “rights of man and the citizen”. Humans are individuals but, as
members of society, they become human citizens.
This obvious fact would have been a good reason for making the
judgment shorter and clearer. It would have been sufficient to say, in line
with the approach adopted by the Privy Council (see paragraph 31) and
others, that by owning and driving a motor car, the human citizen accepts
the existence of the motor-vehicle regulations and undertakes to comply
with them in order to be able to live as a member of society. These
regulations clearly entail certain responsibilities, which form the subject of
the applications we have examined today. End of story.
In the instant case, citing the entire case-law on the right to remain silent
and the privilege against self-incrimination and then applying the resulting
principles in order to arrive at a conclusion which merely adds a further
shade of nuance complicates matters for no good reason. The Court, in
paragraph 57, accepts the wise reasoning of Lord Bingham, a member of the
Privy Council. I would point out that, according to that opinion, “[a]ll who
own or drive motor cars know ...”. If indeed, “[a]ll ... know that by doing so
they subject themselves to a regulatory regime ...”, we must ask: why spend
twelve pages trying to explain what everyone already knows?
Making simple things complicated is tantamount to choosing a path
which is not only wrong but dangerous, and which might one day lead the
Court to examine under Articles 5 and 8 of the Convention whether, when
individuals are stuck in a traffic jam, the deprivation of their liberty and
failure to respect their private lives on the part of the authorities might not
amount to a breach by the State of its positive obligations.
Human rights constitute a tremendous asset to modern society. In order
to preserve this extraordinary achievement, the fruit of countless efforts and
sacrifices, we must continue to combat acts of tyranny. However, we must
also, in my opinion, avoid playing with fire by placing on the same footing
the duty to cooperate of car-owning citizens and the right not to incriminate
oneself.