Over the last decades, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg has developed a comprehensive jurisprudence on human rights and has become one of the most important and most highly respected human rights courts in the world. The course will offer a theoretically informed introduction to the law of the European Convention on Human Rights. It will focus on both the doctrinal framework that the Court has developed – in particular: proportionality, the margin of appreciation, negative and positive obligations, the living instrument doctrine, and the emerging consensus doctrine – and the substantive questions of what the values underlying human rights are and what these values require in specific contexts. With regard to the latter, more philosophical, aspect, we will pay special attention to the idea of human dignity, exploring in some depth the Court’s view that respect for human dignity [and human freedom] is the ‘very essence’ of the Convention.

Topics include: An introduction to the European Convention. Basic concepts of European Convention law: proportionality, the margin of appreciation, living instrument, emerging consensus. Human dignity - ‘the very essence’ of the Convention? Freedom from torture and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment and the role of religious arguments in human rights law. The right to freedom of expression and the protection of offensive expression. Freedom of association, the right to vote, and militant democracy in Europe. The right to private life and the enforcement of morality. The right to freedom of religion and religious pluralism in Europe.