Personal Identity And The European Court Of Human Rights

In this new and burgeoning field in legal and human rights thought, this edited collection explores, by reference to applied philosophy and case law, how the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has developed and presented a right to personal identity, largely through interpretation of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Divided into three parts, the collection interrogates: firstly, the construction of personal identity rights at the ECtHR; secondly, whose identity rights are protected; and thirdly, the limits of identity rights. The collection is the first in the Routledge Studies in Law and Humanity series. Contributions from nine leading and emerging legal scholars from the UK, Ireland and continental Europe explore how the right has developed, rights to identity and marriage, LGBTI+, persons with disabilities, religious and cultural issues and critical perspectives on the social construction and framing of the right. The collection is primarily aimed at scholars and advanced students, particularly of human rights law and its theory, Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law, and those interested in ECtHR jurisprudence, and those interested in the connection between theories of inclusion, belonging and rights, including human rights lawyers.

By analysing the European Court of Human Rightsa (TM) jurisprudence and philosophical debates on personal autonomy, identity and integrity, the book offers a critical analysis of the possibility of different versions of personal freedom emerging in the case law which may restrict rather than enhance personal freedom.

This book explores the role human rights law plays in the formation, and protection, of our personal identities. Drawing from a range of disciplines, Jill Marshall examines how human rights law includes and excludes specific types of identity, which feed into moral norms of human freedom and human dignity and their translation into legal rights. The book takes on a three part structure. Part I traces the definition of identity, and follows the evolution of, and protects, a right to personal identity and personality within human rights law. It specifically examines the development of a right to personal identity as property, the inter-subjective nature of identity, and the intercession of power and inequality. Part II evaluates past and contemporary attempts to describe the core of personal identity, including theories concerning the soul, the rational mind, and the growing influence of neuroscience and genetics in explaining what it means to be human. It also explores the inter-relation and conflict between universal principles and culturally specific rights. Part III focuses on issues and case law that can be interpreted as allowing self-determination. Marshall argues that while in an age of individual identity, people are increasingly obliged to live in conformed ways, pushing out identities that do not fit with what is acceptable. Drawing on feminist theory, the book concludes by arguing how human rights law would be better interpreted as a force to enable respect for human dignity and freedom, interpreted as empowerment and self-determination whilst acknowledging our inter-subjective identities. In drawing on socio-legal, philosophical, biological and feminist outlooks, this book is truly interdisciplinary, and will be of great interest and use to scholars and students of human rights law, legal and social theory, gender and cultural studies.

A new legal concept of identity. As transactions once based on personal relationships are increasingly automated, it is inevitable that our traditional concept of identity will need to be redefined. This book examines the functions and legal nature of an individual's digital identity in the context of a national identity scheme. The analysis and findings are relevant to the one proposed for the United Kingdom, to other countries which have similar schemes, and to countries like Australia which are likely to establish such a scheme in the near future. Under a national identity scheme, being asked to provide ID will become as commonplace as being asked one's name, and the concept of identity will become embedded in processes essential to the national economic and social order. The analysis reveals the emergence of a new legal concept of identity. This emergent concept and the associated individual rights, including the right to identity, potentially change the legal and commercial landscape. The author examines the implications for individuals, businesses and government against a background of identity crime.

Confusion about the differences between the Council of Europe (the parent body of the European Court of Human Rights) and the European Union is commonplace amongst the general public. It even affects some lawyers, jurists, social scientists and students. This book will enable the reader to distinguish clearly between those human rights norms which originate in the Council of Europe and those which derive from the EU, vital for anyone interested in human rights in Europe and in the UK as it prepares to leave the EU. The main achievements of relevant institutions include securing minimum standards across the continent as they deal with increasing expansion, complexity, multidimensionality, and interpenetration of their human rights activities. The authors also identify the central challenges, particularly for the UK in the post-Brexit era, where the components of each system need to be carefully distinguished and disentangled.

This insightful book considers how the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) is faced with numerous challenges which emanate from authoritarian and populist tendencies arising across its member states. It argues that it is now time to reassess how the ECHR responds to such challenges to the protection of human rights in the light of its historical origins.

Rights are typically viewed as embodying interests that are natural, universal or human. This universalizing and objectifying tendency of rights is fundamentally disrupted by the advent of identity in legal discourse, with its emphasis on what is particular about individuals and groups. The aim of this thesis is to find out what identity means for the leading European human rights court, the European Court of Human Rights. In the first part of the thesis, I present a legal analysis of identity by analyzing all rulings mentioning the term 'identity'. Based on a new, systematic and empirically replicable analysis (n=3,362), I demonstrate that the Court's notion of identity is replete with internal contradictions. Yet, the analysis also shows the potential of the Court's notion of identity as a key concept to express a fuller, more complex, and more humane portrayal of the human subject in human rights adjudication. The Court's frequent use of emotions across different identity categories embodies this potential. Most notably in judgments on sexual, familial, and ethnic identity, the Court draws on emotions ranging from a sense of self-confidence to feelings of humiliation and vulnerability to express how the misrecognition of a person's identity might affect their lives. Such judgments show the Court in an exceptionally sensitive light, perceptive to the way identity and the individual's feelings are connected, and how these are impacted by the state. On the other hand, the Court is reluctant to expand on emotional implications for other categories. This gap is most evident in judgments on reputation, citizenship, profession, parents in family cases and religious identity. Hence, the relation between identity and emotions in the case law is imprecise, which constitutes a problem for both legal certainty and substantive justice. In the second part of this thesis, I reflect on this dilemma by reviewing the social theories of Charles Taylor and Axel Honneth as well as the psychological literature on identity and emotions. I argue that the European Court of Human Rights has a complex, multifarious conception of identity, one that challenges established social theories on recognition, but also one that demonstrates flaws and inconsistencies, which can be better informed and systematized by drawing from contemporary psychological findings on identity.

The exceptionality of America’s Supreme Court has long been conventional wisdom. But the United States Supreme Court is no longer the only one changing the landscape of public rights and values. Over the past thirty years, the European Court of Human Rights has developed an ambitious, American-style body of law. Unheralded by the mass press, this obscure tribunal in Strasbourg, France has become, in many ways, the Supreme Court of Europe. Michael Goldhaber introduces American audiences to the judicial arm of the Council of Europe—a group distinct from the European Union, and much larger—whose mission is centered on interpreting the European Convention on Human Rights. The Council routinely confronts nations over their most culturally-sensitive, hot-button issues. It has stared down France on the issue of Muslim immigration; Ireland on abortion; Greece on Greek Orthodoxy; Turkey on Kurdish separatism; Austria on Nazism; and Britain on gay rights and corporal punishment. And what is most extraordinary is that nations commonly comply. In the battle for the world’s conscience, Goldhaber shows how the court in Strasbourg may be pulling ahead.

The most comprehensive and critical analysis of the application of European consensus by the European Court of Human Rights.

According to the case law of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the catalogue of human rights as it is expressed in the American Convention of Human Rights, as well as in all the other international codifications of human rights, contains a serious gap. It does not provide a particular right for the protection of identity. Therefore, the Court demands the creation of an unwritten human right to identity by case law in addition to the written codices of human rights in international law. The philosophers, lawyers and political scientists joined in this book discuss this assumption under different aspects and from different cultural and legal backgrounds (Brazil, China, Germany, Japan, and Turkey). The book contains contributions that analyze the meaning(s) of the concept "identity" based on an individual approach as well as on the basis of a collective approach. It deals with certain aspects of identity in the context of certain fields of positive law, including criminal law and family law, and it questions the real need for a new right to identity.