Thursday 20 June 2013

My New Article on Freedom of Expression and ECHR & ICCPR

I have just posted on SSRN my contribution entitled 'Tacit Citing - The Scarcity of Judicial Dialogue between the Global and the Regional Human Rights Mechanisms in Freedom of Expression Cases' for the book: Tarlach McGonagle and Yvonne Donders (eds.), The United Nations and Freedom of Expression and Information: Critical Perspectives (2013, Forthcoming). This is the abstract:
This chapter delves into the issue of possible interactions concerning freedom of expression standards between the global and the regional levels. The continuing development and interpretation of human rights norms on these two levels poses questions of coherence. The chapter conducts a case study in order to assess whether there is a (quasi-)judicial dialogue between both levels. Specifically, the norm of freedom of expression contained in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), as interpreted by the UN Human Rights Committee, is compared with the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. This specific comparison has been chosen because the Strasbourg system is usually considered to be the most developed and detailed in the sense of norm-interpretation and therefore provides the greatest chance of conducting a viable comparison with the UN level. The chapter also includes a short comparison with the American and African regional human rights systems in this respect. Does the one explicitly refer to the interpretations of the other and vice versa or is any guidance only taken up implicitly? Can either of the two be seen as trend-setters or rather as followers and is there coherence between the two levels of norm-interpretation? These are some of the questions that are addressed in the present contribution.