SAUNDERS v. UNITED KINGDOM JUDGMENT CONCURRING OPINION OF JUDGE WALSH 29 British representatives strongly made the point that English common law already offered as many safeguards for the protection of fundamental rights as did civil-law jurisdictions. In the United States it was possible by the existence of the constitutional Bill of Rights to guarantee the continuation of the protections and privileges borrowed from English common law in a way which could not be achieved in England without the adoption there of similar constitutional provisions. Other common law countries also safeguarded certain common law rights by incorporating them into their written constitutions as indeed did my own country in the Constitution of Ireland. I should add that my vote on the question under Article 50 (art. 50) should not be taken as an acceptance that issues do not arise, in the light of the Court’s finding, as to whether the applicant should be awarded some compensation by the national authorities for the time during which he was deprived of his personal liberty as a result of his conviction. However, it is to be borne in mind that in recent years courts in the United Kingdom have in several cases awarded compensation or damages to persons whose convictions were reversed because they had been obtained by the use or non-use of certain evidential material at the trial, whose use or non-use, as the case may be, was sufficient to establish that the verdict at the trial was unsafe and should not be allowed. They may again be asked to do so in the present case. It is moreover to be noted that in English statute law there are various Acts which prohibit the compulsory disclosure of offences or alternatively prevent such evidence being used as part of the prosecution, in cases as varied as bankruptcy, wrongful conversion, corruption and illegal practices, destruction of wills and the stealing of documents to title, etc. The present statutory provisions which have given rise to the instant case are a post-Convention constitutional departure from common law in England but also from the principles disclosed in the various statutes referred to.