Before you can take a state to the human rights court, you must exhaust your domestic remedies. That means taking whatever action you can in the national courts before going to Strasbourg. By analogy, any challenge to an EU measure will have to start in Luxembourg. If the issue is one of EU law, the Luxembourg ruling will be final. But if there is a human rights point and you are not happy with the outcome, you may then be able to take the EU to Strasbourg.

What effect will the Luxembourg ruling have in the meantime? Lord Lester QC, a member of the human rights committee, suggested to Lord Judge that "we would not have to give direct effect to the Luxembourg court's interpretation since, in the end, it would be up to the Strasbourg court". The chief justice wisely sat on the fence: "You may well be right," he said, "but the opposite submission would be attractive too."

That's because decisions from the Luxembourg court are binding on the courts of the United Kingdom. Far from being something that our own courts must simply "take into account", a judicial interpretation of the human rights convention by a European court would, for the first time, be "recognised and available in law". Our courts would simply have to follow it.