Professor Conor Gearty, NAB, 7.11

For LLM and MSc Human Rights students and other Master's level students with permission. It is not possible to take this course along with LL4B6.

This course is capped at 30 students. Students must apply through Graduate Course Choice on LSEforYou.

This course will provide an overview of the origin, development and current standing of the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. Its primary focus will be on the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights, though the cases of other jurisdictions will also be referred to where appropriate. The course will analyse the Convention from the perspective of selected rights within it, but will also engage with the subject thematically, subjecting such concepts as the 'margin of appreciation' and proportionality to close scrutiny. The goal of the course is to give students a good critical understanding of the Convention, the case-law of the Strasbourg court and the Convention's place within the constitutional and political structure of 'Greater Europe'.

This course complements Human Rights Law: The HRA (LL469) but is entirely self-standing and can easily be taken without that course.

10 two-hour seminars in the MT of each academic year.

Students are asked to submit one 2,000 word essay.

There are two texts that cover the ground of the course and to which reference will be made: Jacobs and White, The European Convention on Human Rights 4th edn (OUP, 2006) and Harris, O'Boyle and Warbrick, Law of the European Convention on Human Rights 2nd edn (Oxford, 2009). Also useful is Mowbray, Cases and Materials on the European Convention on Human Rights 2nd edn (Oxford, 2007). A strong European perspective is to be found in van Dijk, van Hoof, van Rijn and Zwaak (eds), Theory and Practice of the European Convention on Human Rights 4th edn (Intersentia, 2006).

The course will involve textbook reading but will primarily entail analysis of case-law read for the seminar and discussed in class.

This subject is examined by one two-hour paper, composed of at least five questions of which two must be attempted.