If you are interested in joining the Workshop via Zoom, please contact Dr Alain Zysset (alain.zysset(at)glasgow.ac.uk) to request the Zoom log-in details.
It has become a commonplace to argue that human rights are in a state of crisis. This crisis does not only pertain to the social, legal, and political challenges to the protection of human rights, but also to the increased skepticism about the legitimacy, effectiveness, and functioning of the institutions which are called to protect them. As one of the leading human rights institutions in the world, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has not been immune to such criticisms. A range of actors and stake- holders – including legal scholars, judges, politicians, and the media – have questioned the very existence of the Court, targeted particular aspects of its institutional structure, and probed particular areas of the Court’s case law (and, sometimes, focused on only one adverse judgment, e.g. the Hirst case in the UK). These pressures have affected the law-making domain and have materialized in, for example, the explicit re-affirmation of the principle of subsidiarity and the margin of appreciation in Protocol 15. Yet, there is another strand of critique that pulls in the opposite direction: in academic and policy circles, it is common to criticize the Court of watering down the protection of human rights through its deferential doctrines and the lowest-denominator approach to human rights standards. In the view of many commentators and practitioners, the Court is not doing too much but, conversely, far too little.