In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Europe

17 Jan

[Başak Çalı is Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Human Rights at the University College London] This post is the second in a series of three. Last week I suggested that comparing the Von Hannover (2) Case of 2012 and the Fatullayev Case of 2010, both of which concern reviews of freedom of expression decisions given by supreme domestic courts, is a good way of understanding the variable standard of judicial review developed by the European Court of Human Rights.

The Von Hannover Cases (1) and (2)

The Von Hannover (2) Case was the second appearance of Princess Caroline of Monaco before the Strasbourg Court, arguing that the German press had violated her right to privacy. In the first Von Hannover Case of 2004, Princess Caroline advanced the argument that given that she does not hold a public office or have any public functions, the continuous publication of pictures depicting her private life in the German press violated her right to privacy, and the German Courts had failed to protect her. In the first case, the Strasbourg Court found a violation. In the second case it did not. From Princess Caroline’s perspective, this outcome is odd. The explanation lies in how the Strasbourg Court defines its standard of judicial review of domestic courts. 
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11 Jan

[Başak Çalı is Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Human Rights at the University College London] This post is the first in a series of three. The relationship between the highest domestic courts and the European Court of Human Rights has been subject to much debate in the past ten years in Europe. Some of this debate focuses on the backlash against the...

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25 Oct

The agonizing close presidential race in the U.S. has made everyone on edge about election day problems at the polls.  This may explain why the State of Texas has decided to pick a fight with the election observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), threatening to arrest election observers who interfere with the upcoming November 6 elections. Texas...

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09 Sep

My colleague Mark Movsesian has a post at the St. John's Center for Law and Religion Forum concerning the case of Ramil Safarov. He begins: At a NATO conference in Hungary in 2004, an Azeri officer, Ramil Safarov, murdered one of the other participants, an Armenian officer named Gurgen Margaryan. Actually, that doesn’t quite capture it. Safarov broke into Margaryan’s room,...

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22 Aug

Mark Klamberg, who is a lecturer in public international law at the University of Stockholm, has a detailed post on his personal blog about the likelihood -- or unlikelihood, to be more precise -- that Sweden would extradite Julian Assange to the United States.  He has kindly given me permission to reprint a significant portion of it (I've made minor...

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22 Jun

I love soccer (excuse me, "football."). And I actually really enjoy tournaments like the Euro Championships or the World Cup because they remind me of the very powerful patriotic emotions that still exist, even in this supposedly post-national age, and even in the post-national E.U.  Who needs a European Constitution? I will truly believe in the Euro-State when the Europeans...

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15 May

Like thousands of other high school kids, today is AP Comparative Government exam day in the Alford household. According to the AP College Board, "The course aims to illustrate the rich diversity of political life, to show available institutional alternatives, to explain differences in processes and policy outcomes, and to communicate to students the importance of global political and economic changes." But in order to move the discussion from the abstract to the concrete, AP Comp. Gov. students are required to study six--and only six--representative countries. Can you guess the six countries chosen as suitable for comparison? And could you answer the short- or long-essay questions these high school whiz kids are required to answer? Details after the jump:
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11 Apr

In 1973, Hans Blix and Jirina Emerson edited the Treaty Maker’s Handbook to help newly emerging States appreciate, post-decolonization, the intricacies of treaty-making as a matter of both domestic and international law. One of the work’s lasting legacies was the inclusion of sample provisions drawn from existing treaties on various treaty topics such as participation, entry into force, reservations, and...

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27 Feb

It won't save his job, for reasons Julian mentioned a week or so ago, but it's still good news: Spain's top court acquitted renowned judge Baltasar Garzon on Monday of abuse of power by trying to investigate Franco-era atrocities, in a case that exposed deep wounds dating back to the civil war. Six members of the seven-strong Supreme Court...

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26 Feb

All is proceeding as my colleague Anna Gelpern has foreseen. Indeed. Years ago, she mentioned to me in passing that the markets seemed remarkably unaware, or anyway remarkably sanguine, about the question of whether local law (e.g., Greek law) or foreign law (e.g., English law) governed as the choice-of-law clause for the vast tonnage of European sovereign debt.  Today, we find...

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