A Flexible Tool? European Consensus, Majority Preferences and the Progression of Rights

PhD defence by Sidsel Engmann Juul

Assessment Committee

Associate Professor in Human Rights Zuzanna Godzimirska, University of Copenhagen, Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen (Chairperson)
Professor of Human Rights Law Eva Brems, Ghent University, Faculty of Law and Criminology
Associate Professor in Public Law and Human Rights Dimitrios Kagiaros, Durham University, Durham Law School

Supervisors

Professor Jens Elo Petersen Rytter
Peter Vedel Kessing

Department

Full-time Law programs

Place

Building: 4A, Room: 0.69, Njalsgade 76, 2300 København S

Email address to gain access to the thesis: sidsel.juul@jur.ku.dk.
You will either receive a copy of the thesis or be informed where you can read a physical copy.
Recipients of copies of the thesis are not allowed to share or distribute it due to copyright compliance.

Short description of the thesis

When interpreting the rights and freedoms protected by the European Convention on Human Rights, the European Court of Human Rights sometimes looks to the level of agreement among the member states – A method known as European consensus. This dissertation provides the first comprehensive legal empirical study of the Court’s use of European consensus in cases concerning Roma people, persons with disabilities, LGBTQ+ persons, and people living with HIV. It investigates whether the Court constructs and applies European consensus as a flexible interpretative tool capable of countering majority preferences and structural inequalities – or as a blunt instrument that entrenches such preferences and structures and constrains the development of rights for these marginalised groups.