09.12.2019; Vortrag
Calibrating the Legal Response to Populism: Role and Limits for the European Court of Human Rights
Political scientists and theorists have in recent years delineated some constitutive traits of populism as a distinctive social and political phenomenon and scholars are now able to articulate an ideal-type of populism in how it specifically relates to – and challenges – some of the profound aspirations of liberal democracy. Less studied, however, are the legal implications of the populist challenges to liberal democracy. Research has not yet clarified if and to what extent populism conflicts with fundamental legal norms, especially human rights norms.
This guest lecture focuses on one prominent judicial actor whose decisions govern the legal architecture of the European continent and beyond, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). It aims to evaluate if the court should further develop the democratic rights enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) with a view to strengthening both the institutional and deliberative basis of democracy within state parties – a basis that populism can potentially but profoundly erode.