Suchergebnisse

Two leading political scientists present the best of their research, focusing on how to build and test a social science of law and courts. Written for a broad, scholarly audience, the book is also recommended for use in graduate and advanced undergraduate courses in law and the social sciences

Abstract
In their article 'Walking Back Human Rights in Europe?', Helfer and Voeten (hereinafter 'H-V') argue that a series of High Level Conferences (2012–2018), specifically Brighton (2012), dramatically altered the style of the European Court of Human Rights' (ECtHR) decision-making. The Grand Chamber began to adopt judgments which, in turn, provoked an unprecedented wave of 'Walking-Back Dissents'. Such dissents are separate opinions that, in effect, accuse the majority of a Grand Chamber of 'tacitly overturn[ing] prior rulings or settled doctrine in favour of national governments' (H-V, p. 823). In an expansive conclusion, H-V suggest that the ECtHR has also generated a rising number of 'Walking-Back Judgments', which lower standards of rights protection. We reject H-V's major claims on the empirical evidence. The outcomes of Brighton and subsequent conferences did not pose a credible threat to the Court, and could not have induced it to 'walk back' rights protection. We also closely examined two sets of Walking-Back Dissents identified by H-V, focusing on judgments that would be 'most likely to fit' H-V's 'expectations'. We found that fewer than one in four judgments analysed actually contained a Walking-Back Dissent. And we identified only one plausible Walking-Back Judgment. We are confident that H-V's results are inaccurate and cannot be reproduced by external analysts. We conclude by noting factors that H-V do not consider, but that are crucial to understanding the ECtHR's decision-making. In appendices, posted online, we summarize and give reasons for our coding decisions.