LAW 799 - International and E.U. Human Rights Law

College of Law
1 credit(s) At least 1x fall or spring

This seminar examines cutting edge issues in human rights law, primarily through a deep institutional study of the European Court of Human Rights, but also accesses a comparative view of some of the international human rights framework. The course will mostly take place in Strasbourg in order to closely focus on the institutions of human rights articulation and enforcement in the European Union and the Council of Europe. The seminar will be devoted to closely studying various emerging topics in European rights law, which may include: the relationship between international humanitarian and human rights law liability; interactions between international and domestic law regarding specific norms, such as freedom of speech and individual criminal liability, among others.

The European region is at the vanguard of regional rights systems in articulating and promoting international law regarding these issues, and the European Court of Human Rights¿ involvement raises a host of related issues, particularly for states in the Council of Europe. Students will take an active role in discussing and analyzing these and other topics. Students do not require a background in international law, but will benefit from having one. This seminar is a complement to the International Human Rights Law seminar and can be taken in addition to that class, or independently. The issues in these sister-courses will not significantly overlap. While the focus of the IHRL class is on the system of IHRL law and its development and enforcement, this class is centered on the substantive issues arising in the European Union and the Council of Europe. The seminar has an experiential component regarding international law, as well as a writing requirement, either a long paper or a series of short papers, as well as presentations of the materials.
The seminar combines various pedagogical approaches to engage students’ multiple learning modalities. The class is experiential and is primarily learner-driven with a heavy emphasis on student participation and leadership. I structure the course to encourage students’ basic comprehension of reading material to occur before class (including by assigning written responses to the reading materials). By emphasizing and incentivizing student comprehension in advance of class discussions, our time can be focused primarily on higher-level synthesis and critical analysis of the materials. I use a variety of methods to stimulate learner-driven learning and in-class discussion–simulations, case studies, hypotheticals, debates with assigned roles, questions generated from members of the class in advance of the class, and questions from me. I seek to ensure that every student contributes during each and every class, and also encourage students to take responsibility for advancing course discussion.