Part 2 of the Justice and Security Act 2013 makes provision for the availability of closed material proceedings (CMPs) in all civil proceedings. Unsurprisingly the introduction of the Justice and Security Act provoked strong criticisms, the consensus being that the use of CMPs are inherently unfair and any further extension of their use cannot be justified. During the debate surrounding the enactment of the Justice and Security Act generalised claims regarding compatibility of CMPs with the fair trial guarantees were advanced. This thesis provides a response to those claims, and examines the compatibility of the use of CMPs and special advocates under the Justice and Security Act with Article 6(1) of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). This thesis will present the dangers of generalisations. The ECtHR’s Article 6(1) jurisprudence reveals layer upon layer of indeterminacy; and the issues that CMPs and special advocates present with the fair trial guarantees are multi-faceted and require a more nuanced approach. The nuanced analysis taken by this thesis will demonstrate the indeterminacy and illustrate how tensions between the ECtHR’s interpretative principles may impact on the outcome of a challenge brought to Strasbourg. This thesis argues that the tensions need to be reconciled in a way that ensures the level of rights-protection is enhanced rather than debased.