Bermuda’s Domestic Partnership Act 2018: From “living tree” to broken branches?

It is often thought that affording rights is a progressive movement; rights are given to natural legal persons; the rights are normalised in societal expectations and they form part of a body of enforceable rights against the state. On the 7th February 2018, Bermuda became the first state in modern history to withdraw the right of same-sex couples to marry, bucking the trend of progressively affording rights. In a recent judgment, the Bermudian Supreme Court has ruled that taking away the right of same-sex couples to marry is unconstitutional. This article will briefly consider the development of the right of same-sex couples to marry in Bermuda, the connection between Bermudian human rights law and the European Convention on Human Rights and ask whether rights afforded under a constitutional arrangement can be taken away.