Curriculum Guide · Courses

Professor Mahlmann

J.D. Course 1033 (cross-listed) | 3 credit hours

The European legal order has become over the last decades an example how to institutionalize a social order based on the rule of law beyond the traditional limits of the nation state. Today, a multilevel system of law exists that intertwines in complex ways the law of nation states, often themselves with a federal structure, the supranational legal regime of the European Union, the normative framework created by the Council of Europe, most importantly the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and global law.

The course will provide an outline of this legal order, its institutional design, the problems it faces and the prospects it may enjoy. It will an overview of the human rights law of Europe, including contentious matters like human dignity, torture, free speech, religion, assisted suicide or abortion. The course will outline contemporary human rights doctrine within the framework of theoretical and cultural background issues and political subtexts. The institutional makeup of the multilevel system of European public law will be studied including one of the most difficult questions to be answered today: How to balance and organise the institutional tensions of some of the most powerful national, supranational and international courts in the world?

The course is designed to provide the participants with in depth knowledge about the current architecture of human rights law in Europe and its institutional foundation. It hopes to pave the ground for a substantive critical assessment of the role of the European legal order within the global system of law.