The 'Current Issues in Human Rights Research' Lecture Series
The Norwegian Centre for Human Rights invites leading academics from across the globe to give presentations on their cutting edge research within the field of human rights. The aim of the lecture series is to explore human rights research from several viewpoints and disciplines.
About the Lecture
The lecture will consider three inter-related factors that underpin the innovative approaches in the UNTB case law:
- First, the texts of UN human rights treaties often impose more demanding obligations than comparable regional instruments, creating greater scope for innovative interpretation.
- Second, the institutional design of UNTBs provides them with access to a uniquely global register of human rights knowledge, and these bodies have (so far) been open to engagement with progressive developments across international and regional law.
- Third, the UNTBs reject the margin of appreciation doctrine as a structural principle of interpretation. While they recognize that states have discretion to implement their treaty-based obligations and are better placed to undertake fact-finding, they do not accord deference to states in determining the scope and content of human rights and obligations.
The lecture will then consider whether the UNTBs’ interpretive innovation can be explained with reference to their quasi-judicial status and the non-expressly binding nature of their jurisprudence.
Finally, the lecture will conclude by reflecting on the resilience of avant-garde interpretation amid the UN’s open-ended institutional crisis and growing state resistance to the progressive development of international human rights law.
About the Lecturer
Başak Çalı is Professor of International Law and head of research at the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights at the University of Oxford. Previously, she was professor of international law and founding director of the Centre for Fundamental Rights at the Hertie School, Berlin. She holds a permanent visiting professorship from the I-Courts Centre for Excellence at the University of Copenhagen, is a fellow the University of Essex Human Rights Centre and a member of the FAU Research Centre for Human Rights Erlangen-Nurnberg. She works on the theory and practice of international human rights law. She was the principal investigator of ‘Deep Impact through Soft Jurisprudence? The Contribution of United Nations Treaty Body Case Law to the Development of International Human Rights Law’ (German Science Council 2023-2026) which forms the basis of this lecture.
Practical Information
The lecture will be in English. Due to limited space, participants will have to register prior to the lecture.