Wednesday 13 February 2019

New Book on European Consensus and the ECHR

Panos Kapotas of the University of Portsmouth and Vassilis P. Tzevelekos of the University of Liverpool have just published the edited volume 'Building Consensus on European Consensus - Judicial Interpretation of Human Rights in Europe and Beyond' with Cambridge University Press. The consists of three parts: (I) Understanding European Consensus; (II) Appraising European Consensus; and (III) Consensus Analysis Outside the ECHR System. The latter part looks into the Inter-American system, EU law, and even US Supreme Court case-law, among others. This is the abstract of the book:

'Should prisoners have voting rights? Should terminally ill patients have a right to assisted suicide? Should same-sex couples have a right to marry and adopt? The book examines how such questions can be resolved within the framework of the European Convention of Human Rights. 'European consensus' is a tool of interpretation used by the European Court of Human Rights as a means to identify evolution in the laws and practices of national legal systems when addressing morally sensitive or politically controversial human rights questions. If European consensus exists, the Court can establish new human rights standards that will be binding across European states. The chapters of the book are structured around three themes: a) conceptualisation of European consensus, its modus operandi and its effects; b) critical evaluation of its legitimacy and of its outputs; c) comparison with similar methods of judicial interpretation in other legal systems.'

Thursday 7 February 2019

New Book on Sexuality and the ECHR

Damian A Gonzalez Salzberg (University of Sheffield) has published a new book with Hart Publishing, entitled 'Sexuality and Transsexuality Under the European Convention on Human Rights - A Queer Reading of Human Rights Law'. This is the abstract:

'This book undertakes a critical analysis of international human rights law through the lens of queer theory. It pursues two main aims: first, to make use of queer theory to illustrate that the field of human rights law is underpinned by several assumptions that determine a conception of the subject that is gendered and sexual in specific ways. This gives rise to multiple legal and social consequences, some of which challenge the very idea of universality of human rights. Second, the book proposes that human rights law can actually benefit from a better understanding of queer critiques, since queer insights can help it to overcome heteronormative beliefs currently held. In order to achieve these main aims, the book focuses on the case law of the European Court of Human Rights, the leading legal authority in the field of international human rights law. The use of queer theory as the theoretical approach for these tasks serves to deconstruct several aspects of the Court's jurisprudence dealing with gender, sexuality, and kinship, to later suggest potential paths to reconstruct such features in a queer(er) and more universal manner.'