European Court of Human Rights Rules on Public Nudity Case (October 18, 2014) [1]
On October 29, 2014, the European Court of Human Rights (the Court) ruled [3] in Gough v. the United Kingdom that Scotland had not violated the European Convention of Human Rights [4] (the Convention) by repeatedly arresting and imprisoning Mr. Gough for appearing naked in public. According to the press release [5], Mr. Gough “was arrested over thirty times in Scotland for being naked in public . . . [and] convicted on a number of occasions of breach of the peace . . . [as well as] contempt of court for refusing to dress for his court appearances.” The Court ruled that these arrests did not violate Article 8 (right to respect for private life) or Article 10 (freedom of expression), since his imprisonment was “the consequence of his repeated violation of the criminal law, in full knowledge of the consequences, through conduct which went against the standards of accepted public behaviour in any modern democratic society.”