The Legitimacy of Family Rights in Strasbourg Case Law: ‘Living Instrument’ or Extinguished Sovereignty? (Modern Studies in European Law) - Softcover

Carmen Draghici

Softcover

ISBN 10: 150992891X ISBN 13: 9781509928910

Publisher: Hart Publishing, 2019

Synopsis

Modern family life exhibits a huge variety of new forms. Legal responses to these new forms illustrate the continuing differences between European nations. Nonetheless, the Strasbourg Court has been increasingly active in this area, which provides fertile ground for testing the legitimacy of the Court’s interpretation of the European Convention on Human Rights. When national law refuses to recognize a claimed right, litigants regularly reassert that right before the Strasbourg Court. This has forced it to seek answers to complex domestic controversies, such as the legal recognition for same-sex partners and transgender persons, the ethics of adoption and reproductive rights, the legal regime for cohabitants, or the accommodation of immigrants’ aspiration to family reunion.

Placing family rights at the core of the judicial legitimacy debate, this book provides a critical analysis of the standards of family rights protection under the Convention. It evaluates the Court’s interpretive methodology and discusses the tensions inherent in its supranational quasi-constitutional function. These include the risk of excessive deference to national authorities, at the expense of the effective enforcement of universal rights; the addition of 'new rights'; and inattention to the division of responsibilities between democratic processes within sovereign States and the subsidiary international review.

About this title

About the Author

Dr Carmen Draghici is Senior Lecturer in Law at City, University London’s Law School, where she joined in 2009. She teaches Human Rights Law and Family and Child Law at undergraduate/ graduate-entry level, and she acts as Deputy Director and Admissions Tutor for the undergraduate programme. She is also a member of the London-based Centre for Child and Family Law Reform (since 2010). Dr. Draghici holds a PhD degree in ‘International Law and Human Rights’ from the University of Rome ‘Sapienza’ (awarded in 2007). She was formerly a Visiting Fellow at the Harvard Law School’s Human Rights Program (2015), a Visiting Research Scholar at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University (2012), a Leverhulme Visiting Post-doctoral Research Fellow at the Centre on Human Rights in Conflict, University of East London (2008), and a Visiting Professor in Public International Law at the Open University of Catalonia, Barcelona (2009-2014). Her main research interests concern the judicial interpretation of the European Convention on Human Rights and the responsibility of States and international organisations for breaches of human-rights obligations; her work has focused in particular on the right to respect for private and family life, freedom of expression, and the protection of civil liberties in the context of counter-terrorism. Her publications include several articles and chapters published in UK, US and European journals and edited collections and a book titled The Legitimacy of Family Rights in Strasbourg Case Law: ‘Living Instrument’ or Extinguished Sovereignty? (Hart Publishing, 2016, forthcoming).

Edition details

• Publisher: Hart Publishing
• Publication date: 2019
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 150992891X
• ISBN 13: 9781509928910
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 456