Alle college aantekeningen International and European Human Rights Law

INTERNATIONAL AND EUROPEAN
HUMAN RIGHTS LAW
Inhoudsopgave
Lesson 1 – Koen Lemmens – 26/09/2024........................................................................................................ 3

Lesson 2 – Koen Lemmens – 03/10/2024........................................................................................................ 6

Lesson 3 – Koen Lemmens – 17/10/2024...................................................................................................... 11

Lesson 4 – Koen Lemmens – 18/10/2024...................................................................................................... 14

Lesson 5 – Koen Lemmens – 24/10/2024...................................................................................................... 19

Lesson 6 – Koen Lemmens – 25/10/2023...................................................................................................... 24

Lesson 7 – Koen Lemmens – 31/10/2024...................................................................................................... 29

Lesson 8 – Koen Lemmens – 07/11/2024...................................................................................................... 35

Lesson 9 – Paul Lemmens – 08/11/2024....................................................................................................... 39

Lesson 10 – Koen Lemmens – 14/11/2024.................................................................................................... 43

Lesson 11 – Koen Lemmens – 15/11/2024.................................................................................................... 49

Lesson 12 – Koen Lemmens – 28/11/2024.................................................................................................... 53

Lesson 13 – Koen Lemmens – 29/11/2024.................................................................................................... 58

Lesson 14 – Koen Lemmens – 05/12/2024.................................................................................................... 66

Lesson 15 – Paul Lemmens – 06/12/2024..................................................................................................... 72

Lesson 16 – Koen Lemmens – 12/12/2024.................................................................................................... 80

Lesson 17 – Koen Lemmens – 13/12/2024.................................................................................................... 87

Les 18 – Koen Lemmens- 19/12/2024........................................................................................................... 92

Exam Preparation Session............................................................................................................................ 94




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, Practical information

2 questions: 1 open question & 1 case
 We must answer in 1 page
 We can bring our legal texts and our dictionary

Toledo: Text folder
 Allowed to bring it to the exam
 Normal rules from the codex apply here

Toledo: Handouts
 Summaries of each class; help us to complement our notes

Toledo: PowerPoints


Lessons Paul Lemmens
 Outlines
 A lot of references to case law. Some of these cases, we will discuss them, but
we will not discuss most of them. We do not have to check them and read all
these cases. We have to know the cases that are explicitly mentioned in the
classes.




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,Lesson 1 – Koen Lemmens – 26/09/2024
What are human rights? Is enforceability a part of human rights?

The problem with a definition of human rights is that, especially in the philosophical account
of human rights, either their definition is underprotective either they come up with a very
thick account of human rights and they cannot explain why in reality or why in many
conventions some of that rights, according to your thick account of human rights, or to be
protective, are not protected or are not in account with the human right treaties.
 There’s a problem
 After WWII: universal declaration of human rights
 Philosophers thought about the question ‘how can people from places all
over the world coming from such different backgrounds agree on such a
difficult concept as human rights?’
 The concept is not hard to define, but the conceptions are very hard to define

We are talking about something that is so familiar, human rights. But at the same time, we
don’t know what we are talking about exactly.
The limits, the border lines … are very much open to discussion.
 People do not all the time agree to what they are talking about
 If we want to avoid this discussion among lawyers, philosophers… we maybe have to
adopt more historical rights
 We can think about the question why a right is into a treaty. If we know the
historical background, we can explain why a right is in a treaty.
 We have to think about human rights as rights that were created at a certain time

If we understand what human rights are for and were they come from, we can better
understand them
 We can understand why some rights are human rights and why other rights aren’t
human rights
2 big explanations of what human rights do
1. Temper power
2. Protecting dignity

1. Temper power (slide 3 ppw 1)
 basis in the modern understanding of human rights
 human rights in our understanding are very much the rights that are created at the
time of modernity

Law is man’s business
 Grotius: ‘we should think of the law as if God does not exist’
 Grotius is not saying that God does not exist; he says ‘we should act as if’
 That’s a fundamental revolution: it becomes clear that everything we hold, is
not a mature of God, but it’s made by humans



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,  For lawyers, this means that we should think about the fundamental question
who we are, about the question why one person should obey another person
 The law is conventional mechanism
 From that moment: when you say something, you have to explain it
 Idea of modernity: thinking about the modernity of the law
 If you constitute power, you also have to limit the power

 The limits of power are human rights


2. Protect human dignity (slide 3 ppw 1)

In the Belgian constitution, human dignity appears very late. It’s a matter of 1993-1194.
Human dignity is the argument that people need whenever the formalistic positivist delivers
very unwanted and unhappy results.

Nazis argued that they applied the law: ‘the law is the law’. This is a valid way of reason, but
we can also feel that you can’t push that to its extremes. Than a notion as human dignity
comes out.

What does ‘universal’ mean? (slide 4 ppw 1)

Inalienable: you cannot due away the human rights

Although we may not perfectly know what they all do, what they all are about, we know
what they do. They temper power and they protect human dignity. These human rights have
some specific features.
 Human rights are absolute
 Wrong understanding that there are no limits to them
 There are very few human rights that are absolute in the way that they have
not any limitation
 Example: prohibition of slavery
o There cannot be an exception to this human right
o Absolute HR
 Example: right no to be tortured (= martelen)
o This is also an absolute human right in the way than there cannot be
an exception to it
o Absolute HR
 Example: right to life
o There are exceptions to the right of life
o NOT an absolute HR
 SO: If you mean by ‘absolute’ that a human right is all the time, without
restrictions being applied, that’s not what absolute can mean. But if you want
to say it’s absolute in that there are no higher norms, than it’s a good
argument.
 Human rights are universal


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