SOERING v. THE UNITED KINGDOM JUDGMENT CONCURRING OPINION OF JUDGE DE MEYER 44 CONCURRING OPINION OF JUDGE DE MEYER The applicant’s extradition to the United States of America would not only expose him to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. It would also, and above all, violate his right to life. Indeed, the most important issue in this case is not "the likelihood of the feared exposure of the applicant to the ‘death row phenomenon’"1, but the very simple fact that his life would be put in jeopardy by the said extradition. The second sentence of Article 2 § 1 (art. 2-1) of the Convention, as it was drafted in 1950, states that "no one shall be deprived of his life intentionally save in the execution of a sentence of a court following his conviction of a crime for which this penalty is provided by law". In the circumstances of the present case, the applicant’s extradition to the United States would subject him to the risk of being sentenced to death, and executed, in Virginia2 for a crime for which that penalty is not provided by the law of the United Kingdom3. When a person’s right to life is involved, no requested State can be entitled to allow a requesting State to do what the requested State is not itself allowed to do. If, as in the present case, the domestic law of a State does not provide the death penalty for the crime concerned, that State is not permitted to put the person concerned in a position where he may be deprived of his life for that crime at the hands of another State. That consideration may already suffice to preclude the United Kingdom from surrendering the applicant to the United States. There is also something more fundamental. The second sentence of Article 2 § 1 (art. 2-1) of the Convention was adopted, nearly forty years ago, in particular historical circumstances, shortly after the Second World War. In so far as it still may seem to permit, under certain conditions, capital punishment in time of peace, it does not reflect the contemporary situation, and is now overridden by the development of legal conscience and practice4. 1 § 99 of the judgment. § 40 of the judgment. 3 § 27 of the judgment. 4 See also Article 6 §§ 2 and 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and Article 4 §§ 2 and 3 of the American Convention on Human Rights. The very wording of each of these provisions, adopted respectively in 1966 and in 1969, clearly reflects the evolution of legal conscience and practice towards the universal abolition of the death penalty. 2