Koen Lemmens

• PhD
• KU Leuven

Judgment: European Court of Human Rights, Sanchez v France 45581/15 (ECtHR, 2 September 2021), Judgment (Merits and Just Satisfaction). Section of the Court: Chamber (Fifth Section). Applicable Convention Rights: Article 10 echr – no violation. Primary Legal Issues: To what extent, under which circumstances and how can the holder of a public Facebo...

This volume focuses on three main themes that are interdependent: the universality, the proliferation and the costs of human rights. This introductory chapter frames these themes in the context of their theoretical background and explains why they have been chosen as focus of the book. Subsequently, it brings together the essential findings of the...

This insightful book offers a critical reflection on the sustainability and effectiveness of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and its legacy over the last 70 years. Exploring the problems surrounding universality, proliferation and costs, it asks the provocative question, can we still afford human rights? Expert contributors illust...

European Court of Human Rights – Protocol No. 16 – Advisory Opinions – Managing backlog – Unpredictable effects – Complex judicial dialogue – Interplay with preliminary rulings of European Court of Justice and national constitutional courts – Bosphorus presumption – National courts in charge of judicial diplomacy – Increased burden for national cou...

The Margin of Appreciation in the ECtHR’s Case Law: A European Version of the Levels of Scrutiny Doctrine? Although the American doctrine of levels of scrutiny and the European concept of margin of appreciation are regularly compared as typical instances of deferential judicial decision-making, this article argues that owing to the institutional se...

In a recent article, Neville Cox argued that there is no right under international human rights law to publish 'irreligious' cartoons. Secondly, he questioned the very idea of such a right. Finally, he argued that, given the fact that there is no international right to publish irreligious cartoons and that the message spread by the cartoons was aki...

There is a passionate debate going on in the Netherlands and Flanders on the figure of Zwarte Piet (Black Pete). Zwarte Piet is a character that is part of the tradition of ‘Sinterklaas’1: Piet is the black valet of Sinterklaas. Because of the stereotyped depiction of Sinterklaas’ companion (black face, thick rouged lips, curly hair, golden earring...

div class="title">Nihil novi sub sole? - Fabbrini Federico , Fundamental Rights in Europe. Challenges and Transformations in Comparative Perspective (Oxford University Press 2014) 319 p. - Volume 12 Issue 3 - Koen Lemmens

This chapter inquires into the presence of criticism of the ECtHR in political circles, courts, media and legal scholarship. On the basis of country reports, the chapter develops seven hypotheses as to which factors are decisive for a Strasbourg-friendly, suspicious or hostile stance.

For some time now, the European Court of Human Rights is under substantial pressure. From a case overload crisis it stumbled into a legitimacy crisis with regard to certain countries. This should be taken seriously, since scholars warn that institutions with eroding legitimacy risk demise or reform. The goal of this volume is to explore how widespr...

Criticism of the European Court of Human Rights - edited by Patricia Popelier June 2016

The Belgian constitution, once described as a model of consensus democracy, has now become an engima in comparative federalism. On the one hand, it demonstrates features chich suggest institutional instability as well as elements that enhance the probability of succession. On the other hand, Belgium continues to exist as a federal system, based upo...

The French and Belgian burqa bans are heavily criticised by many legal scholars since they constitute a disproportionate and discriminatory (if not "racist") interference with the freedom of religion, as protected by art.9 ECHR. In this article, I argue that this critique fails to see that the phenomenon of the burqa raises questions primarily abou...

The last decades have witnessed a renewed interest in comparative law. Comparative law has gained a foothold in academic curricula, comparative law journals have sprung up, and comparative law is coming to the fore in Ph.D. theses, research projects and major academic publications. Yet strikingly, comparative scholarship, notwithstanding obvious re...

In this article, the dynamics of legal language is analyzed from the perspective of a lawyer The focus will therefore be, not on the linguistic mechanisms of change, but on the reasons that can explain why, on the one hand, legal language, and more particularly, legal terminology has a tendency to remain unaltered, and why, on the other hand, legal...

There has been a fierce debate amongst scholars about the way privacy ought to be protected in civil law countries. The key issue at stake is the question whether this protection should be implemented via so-called ‘personality rights’ (i.e. a special category of subjective rights) or whether it would be more appropriate to conceive privacy in term...