REVISED TIMINGS: HLML 2020: 'Human Rights and the Making of Europe: The European Court of Human Rights in the Grand Transformation'

A series of three lectures by Professor Mikael Rask Madsen, Professor of European Law and Integration, Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen.

Due to industrial action these lectures have been rearranged to take place all on Friday 6 March in the following format:

10.00 am - 11.15 am - Part 1

11.15 am - 11.45 am - Coffee break

11.45 am - 1.00 pm - Part 2

1.00 pm - 1.45 pm - Lunch

1.45 pm - 2.45 pm - Q&A 

Topics to be covered

Legalizing Free Europe: Human Rights, Cold War and the Construction of the Post-War European Legal Order (1959-89)

The ECtHR in the New Europe (1989-2009)

The End of Consensus: The ECtHR in the Age of Megapolitics (2009-2019)

Q&A

In these lectures, I will analyse the place of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in the making of contemporary Europe. The lectures examines how the ECtHR has both responded to changing socio-political contexts and contributed to the making of Europe since the court’s establishment in 1959. The first lecture focuses on the position of the court in the Cold War (1959-89) and how it navigated these constraints and eventually emerged as a powerful institution of European human rights and integration in the late 1970s. The second lecture, covering the period 1989-2009), analyses the court in the New Europe and the structural and institutional transformations this triggered, notably in terms of institutional reform and deeper national embeddedness. The third lecture, covering the past decade (2009-19), focuses on the growing resistance to the ECtHR in the context of deteriorating intra-European relations. The lecture investigates how megapolitical issues have entered the court’s caseload and with wide-ranging consequences. It concludes with a view to the future of the European human rights, drawing on comparative lessons from other international courts.

Mikael Rask Madsen is a professor of European Law and Integration at the Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen, and the founder and director of iCourts, the Danish National Research Foundation's Centre of Excellence for International Courts. Trained as a lawyer and political sociologists, his research has explores the globalization of law and the legal profession and its effects on new forms of institutions, notably international courts. He is the author of more than a hundred academic publications, most recently International Court Authority (Oxford University Press, 2018), co-edited with Karen Alter and Laurence Helfer and 'Between Universalism and Regional Law and Politics: A Comparative History of the American, European and African Human Rights Systems,' International Journal of’ Constitutional Law, co-authored with A Huneeus. He is the recipient of a number of research prizes, including the Elite Researcher Prize (2017), The Carlsberg Research Prize (2019) and best paper prize, International Journal of’ Constitutional Law.

The Hersch Lauterpacht Memorial Lecture is an annual three-part lecture series given in Cambridge to commemorate the unique contribution to the development of international law of Sir Hersch Lauterpacht. These lectures are given annually by a person of eminence in the field of international law. 

There is no recording available for this lecture series.