The 1985 European Charter of Local Self-Government secures the autonomy of local government within states and sets the standards for subsidiary at the local level. Chris Himsworth analyses the text of the 1985 European Charter of Local Self-Government, traces its historical emergence and explains how it has been applied and interpreted throughout Europe, including the 2014' Local and regional democracy in the United Kingdom' report published by the Council of Europe in March 2014. Locating the Charter's own history within the broader recent history of the Council of Europe and the European Union, the book closes with an assessment of the Charter's future prospects.

In June, 1998, the Faculty of Law of the University of Edinburgh convened a conference of academics, judges and distinguished practitioners from the UK and abroad to discuss the implications of the incorporation of the ECHR into Scots law. The contributors considered the impact of the Human Rights Act in light of the new constitutional settlement for Scotland and their experiences of other rights regimes in Europe, the Commonwealth, and the United States. The contributions span the fields of Private, Public, European Community and Comparative law and draw on human rights law and practice in the UK, the European Community, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, the United States and Sweden, where the ECHR was recently incorporated. Topics include: analyses of the Human Rights Act and Scotland Act; human rights and the law of crime, property, employment, family and private life; Scottish court practice and procedure; Scots law and the European dimension; and building a rights culture in Scotland.