UCD Human Rights Network hosts UCH Human Rights Annual Lecture
The UCD School of Law, in conjunction with the UCD Human Rights Network, recently hosted the UCH Human Rights Annual Lecture which was delivered by Mr. Michael O’Boyle, Deputy Registrar of the European Court of Human Rights.
The lecture served to celebrate the launch earlier in the academic year of the Masters in Human Rights programmes, which are being jointly run by the UCD School of Law and the School of Politics and International Relations. It also coincided with the School of Law’s Annual PhD conference which was taking place this year on the theme of the European Convention on Human Rights. The lecture was attended by academic staff and students from across UCD and other Universities, as well as members of the legal profession, the Irish Human Rights Commission and non-governmental organizations.
Mr. O’Boyle has been the Deputy Registrar of the European Court of Human Rights since 2006 and was previously Registrar of the First and Fourth Sections of the Court. He is the author of numerous articles in the field of public law and human rights and co-author of The Law of the European Convention on Human Rights, 2nd ed. (Butterworths, 2009). Educated in Queens University, Belfast, (LLB), the Harvard Law School (LLM) and the International Institute of Human Rights, Strasbourg (Diploma in the international and comparative law of human rights), he is a barrister-at-Law and former Lecturer in Public Law, Faculty of Law, Queens University.
Entitled “The Future of the European Court of Human Rights”, the lecture answered recent criticisms regarding the “constitutional legitimacy” of the Court by recalling the history and raison d’être of the Convention system as an instrument for the collective enforcement of human rights in Europe. Despite the enormous success of the Court since its foundation in creating a “corpus” of European values, it is still confronted with major difficulties in managing its case load. Emphasizing the importance of national implementation, Mr. O’Boyle discussed the potential of a number of procedural reforms in tackling this issue, including the pilot judgment procedure, advisory opinions as well as the introduction of further filtering mechanisms. A further theme addressed in regard to the future of the Court was the impending accession of the EU to the ECHR, following the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty.
L-R: John Jackson, Michael O Boyle, Suzanne Egan
http://www.ucd.ie/law/programmes/llmhumanrights/
http://www.ucd.ie/spire/prospectivepostgraduatestudents/mschumanrights/
