6107.23 - Human Rigths Law

6107.23

Human Rigths Law

10

Bachelor’s degree or equivalent with adequate component of law.

The purpose of the course is to examine the contemporary significance of human rights against their political, historical and philosophical background. The course combines an institutional, theoretical, political, historical and legal-dogmatic approach to the study of human rights.

The course starts with a teoretical part by putting the current human rights regimes and human rights thinking in historical and philosophical perspective. The idea of the universality of human rights is discussed in the context of different theoretical views, such as positivism and natural law. The opposing views of formalism on the one hand and realism and pragmatism on the other hand, and how these influence the argumentation style and justificaton of human rights, are discussed. Additional theoretical topics are covered, such as the relationship between moral and legal human rights, and how the temptation to cloth political ideology as human rights can pose a treath to the integrity and legitimacy of human rights. The course then moves on to the institutional part of the international human rights system, foundational legal intruments and legal sources, as the UN Charter and Treaty System, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the International Covenant on Civil and Political rights (ICCPR), and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (IESCR). Included in the institutional part is a regional part with emphasis on the Council of Europe, the European Convention on Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights. The latter part of the course deals with a critical discussion of representative case law from especially the right to from the European Court of Human Rights, and the practice of UN human rights committees as monitoring organs and a sort of adjudicative organs. The analyses aims to uncover what kind of legal argumentation and justification is predominant, and how the case law and practice influences local law. The case law and practice will be represented by central rights in mainly the European Convention on Human Rights and the ICCPR, such as the right to respect for private and family life, the freedom of thought and religion, the right to free speech, and the freedom of assembly and association.

Approx. 40 hours of student time confrontation. The teaching consists of lectures, critical discussions, work in groups, student presentations and other forms of active student centered learning.

After completing this course, the students shall be able to: - Describe the historical developments in human rights and in human rights thinking. - Describe important human rights regimes, such as the UN-system and the system under the Council of Europe, and important legal instruments, including the UDHR, ICCPR, the ECHR, and other international and regional human rights treaties. - Analyze important legal characteristics of human rights treaties, such as their scope of application, their supervision and enforcement mechanisms, and their legal impact on a national and international level. - Analyze important human rights case law and committee practice and their mode of argumentation and writing style. - Analyze human rights case law and committee practice in light of central legal theories and theories on human rights law. - Identify human rights problems in cases of varying context, and critically assess, evaluate and present different solutions for various types of human rights problems. - Present and formulate knowledge and arguments in a correct manner both orally and in writing.

A written take home exam of 48 hours duration in the middle of the course will count for 50% of the grade, and an oral exam, with time for preparation, at the end of the course will count for 50 % of the grade. A precondition for passing the overall course is that the student has passed both exam components.

External

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Reading materials, such as legal instruments, academic articles and excerpts from books, adjudicative materials, as judgments and committee reports, will be available prior to teaching on the Moodle network.

Bárður Larsen