A presentation by Silvia Steininger (Max Planck Institute of Comparative Public Law and International Law and Goethe University Frankfurt). This event is part of the Fundamental Rights Research Colloquium hosted by the Centre for Fundamental Rights.
Times have changed in both the European and the Inter-American human rights regimes. Over the last two decades, the political and legal discourse has shifted and the narrative of constitutionalisation has lost ground to that of crisis. This crisis becomes most apparent in the return of the exit option: several states parties have threatened to or even effectively withdrawn from the respective human rights regimes, while others were faced with demands to severely sanction or even expel them from the institution. Exit symbolises a regression in the protection of human rights by depriving those most vulnerable from recourse to human rights bodies, and in particular, to human rights courts. Hence, it is not surprising that the institutional scripts of regional human rights are naturally exit averse. Yet, institutionalist scholarship, particularly Albert O. Hirschman, also sees exits as an opportunity for institutional development.
Against this background, Silvia Steininger wants to shed light on how recent instances of backlash against the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) have contributed to the regulation of exit and thereby to institutional development. She argues that state exit, while problematic in several aspects, led to an institutional re-orientation towards the often undetermined, undemocratic, and ineffective rules and practices on state exit. The IACtHR’s recent advisory opinion on the consequences of the state withdrawal from the Inter-American human rights regime offers several interesting lessons to safeguard the effectiveness of human rights in a situation of exit. In particular, the clear reliance on the concept of ‘collective guarantee’ provides a vision of the Inter- American human rights system in times of backlash that can withstand authoritarian populism and democratic regression. You can check out any time you like, but can you really leave?
This presentation is part of the Fundamental Rights Research Colloquium's cluster on 'Effectiveness of Human Rights'. This series of the Centre for Fundamental Rights colloquium brings together scholars across disciplines at various career stages to present important new scholarship on the effectiveness of human rights norms and institutions, examining a variety of international human rights and international criminal law norms, their public support and institutional impact across diverse sites and levels.
Silvia Steininger is a Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute of Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg and a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Law, Goethe University Frankfurt. She holds graduate degrees in public international law (University of Amsterdam) and political science (University of Heidelberg) and teaches human rights and public international law in universities in Germany and France. In her PhD project, she investigates the consequences of state backlash upon the institutional resilience of the European and Inter-American human rights regimes from an interdisciplinary perspective. Previous research stays led her to iCourts Centre of Excellence for International Courts, the European University Institute and the Department for the Execution of ECHR Judgments in Strasbourg. More generally, she is interested in theoretical, critical, and empirical questions relating to the authority of international institutions, human rights, investment law, and the respective dispute settlement bodies.
Prior registration is required. Registered attendees will receive the dial-in details as well as a draft paper, on which the presentation is based, via e-mail prior to the event.
