Just fatherlands? Judging the Shoah in Strasbourg.

Lyons, Carole

Abstract

The primary preoccupation of this chapter is an examination of how Europe's highest human rights court works through the enduring effects of the 'moral catastrophe' of the Holocaust. The issue of the role of past inhumanity within Europe's present is fundamental and informs (or ought to) theways in which justice is done and understood in Europe as a whole. This chapter concentrates on one judicial forum, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), and the continuing influence of the Holocaust/Shoah within its jurisprudence. The focus on a particular past in the evolution of European human rights raises general questions as to how history and memory are mediated through the judicial route and, more specifically, how the legacy of Auschwitz has helped to mould the human rights culture which now guides 47 European states, including the 28 EU Member States. This chapter suggests that such mutual dependencywould be difficult to arrive at in the absence of a parallel mutual confrontation of the past.

Citation

LYONS, C. 2015. Just fatherlands? Judging the Shoah in Strasbourg. In Kochenov, D., de Búrca, G. and Williams, A. (eds.) Europe's justice deficit? Oxford: Hart [online], chapter 26, pages 381-400. Available from: https://doi.org/10.5040/9781474201193.ch-026

• Online Publication Date: Mar 26, 2015
• Publication Date: Apr 30, 2015
• Deposit Date: Oct 18, 2018
• Publicly Available Date: Oct 18, 2018
• Publisher: Hart Publishing
• Pages: 381-400
• Book Title: Europe's justice deficit?
• Chapter Number: 26
• ISBN: 9781849465274 ; 9781509915491
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.5040/9781474201193.ch-026
• Keywords: Human rights; Holocaust; European Court of Human Rights; Jurisprudence
• Public URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10059/3183
• Related Public URLs: https://rgu-repository.worktribe.com/output/1664602 (Working paper version)