This article rationalises the case law of the European Court of Human Rights under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights in deportation cases involving children. The Court engages in a balancing exercise between the right to family life of the deportee’s family on the one side, and the public interest in deportation on the other. This article expands on existing case law analysis by suggesting that in deportation cases, the Court considers Article 8 as a form of commonly held right, rather than an individual right held by one member of the family. Furthermore, the balance is argued to be constructed as a relationship between two factors on both sides, rather than of a sole factor on either side as being determinative. This article concludes that the best interests of the child (one of the ‘Üner criteria’) is not adequately reflected in the Court’s deportation decision-making practice.

, Natural Resources and Human Rights: An Appraisal (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2018, xvii + 224 pp, £70) ISBN: 9780198795667 (hb)

In 2014 and 2017, the European Court of Human Rights, respectively, upheld France’s and Belgium’s general bans on wearing face-covering veils in public. Whereas both the acceptance of ensuring the minimum conditions for ‘living together’ as a legitimate aim and the recognition of a wide margin of appreciation appear to demonstrate a pluralistic approach taken by the Court, this article examines the Court’s understanding and application of the principle of pluralism in its reasoning and, in this way, explores why and how the Court’s pluralistic view has led to an anti-pluralistic outcome. It purports to show that it was precisely a majoritarian conception of pluralism that has led the Court to make decisions to the disadvantage of minorities. Moreover, it illustrates how the European multilevel system of human rights protection should be developed in support of the realisation of pluralism.

The discussion of the recognition of human rights by law suffers from the acceptance of three myths: that recognition is provided for in human rights instruments, that there exist moral norms ready to be recognised by law and that recognition is what happens when a legal norm that corresponds to a moral precept is adopted. To counter the first myth, the article undertakes a close reading of the relevant passages of human rights instruments. To counter the second myth, the article observes that there exist few if any universally valid moral norms ready to be recognised by law but an abundance of other moral precepts. To counter the third myth, the article argues that what happens is rather the replication of the content of a moral precept in law. From all these, it follows that there cannot be any necessary connection between moral norms or other precepts and legal human rights. This distinctness of moral precepts and legal human rights, it is argued in conclusion, is apt to strengthen legal human rights protection: it diminishes the influence ‘traditional values’ might otherwise have on this protection.