Art. 8 ECHR in European Case Studies

Project period: 2024-2027

Human rights comprise rights to which people are entitled solely by virtue of their humanity. Guaranteeing them is one of the legal ideals of modernity. Human rights are not static; rather, they are based on communication processes and require interpretation as well as enforcement. Examining cases addressing Art. 8 ECHR, we wish to explore how human rights affect the discourse in national law and our attempts at legitimation.

We want to study examples illustrating  how human rights are contemporarily justified, restricted, and criticized (human rights as debated). How universal are human rights, given that animals and nature are not included and given that their scope is linked to consensus and cultural identity? Is the notion of human rights limited in terms of its growth, and could the notion potentially be overturned (human rights as criticized)? We also want to look at how human rights work (human rights in action). In European cases considering Art. 8 ECHR (right to respect for private and family life), we will trace the grounds on which individual conceptions of human rights are developed and formulated, the ways in which they circulate throughout Europe, and how they influence national law. Such an inquiry focuses, for example, on legal conceptions of abortion, surrogacy, same-sex marriage, fathers’ rights, and family protection against violence. As part of this examination, it is of central importance to analyse the notion of “European consensus” as developed and applied by the European Court of Human Rights.