In this paper we report on a significant research project undertaken to design, implement and evaluate explainable decision-support tools for deciding legal cases. We provide a model of a legal ...domain, Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, constructed using a methodology from the field of computational models of argument. We describe how the formal model has been developed, extended and transformed into practical tools, which were then used in evaluation exercises to determine the effectiveness and usability of the tools. The underpinning AI techniques used yield a level of explanation that is firmly grounded in legal reasoning and is also digestible by the target end users, as demonstrated through our evaluation activities. The results of our experimental evaluation show that on the first pass, our tool achieved an accuracy rate of 97% in matching the actual decisions of the cases and the user studies conducted gave highly encouraging results with respect to usability. As such, our project demonstrates how trustworthy AI tools can be built for a real world legal domain where critical needs of the end users are accounted for.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
Through gaining lessons from the doctrine of constitutionality control, the book deals principally with conventionality control achieved by judicial adjudicators. This monograph fills the gap in ...comparative international human rights law by analysing the practice of conventionality control in Europe and Latin America. Based on the empirical data, the author normatively envisions a ‘trapezium’ model of conventionality control with the features of openness, substantivism and human-centrism, which overcomes the limits of the closed, formalist, and State-centric ‘pyramid‘ model. Author: Yota Negishi, Associate Professor of Public International Law, Seinan Gakuin University, Fukuoka, Japan.
Many migrants remain in host countries under a state of undeportability—a paradoxical circumstance in which they confront both an extreme unlikelihood of deportation and an imminent threat of it. ...Drawing on the case of irregular Chinese migrants in the UK, this article argues that the situation stems from what I term a ‘human rights paradox’—a contradiction between the universal human rights norms that mandate governments to protect the rights inherent to all human beings and the persistent state sovereignty and the growing anti-immigration sentiment that relegates non-citizens, particularly those having no legal status, to the margins of the human rights system. Hence, undeportability has its roots in the foundational principles of liberal democracy, rather than simply resulting from ineffective immigration policies or individual resistance to deportation.
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În cuprinsul acestui articol, am analizat interpretarea flexibilă a Convenției Europene de către Curtea Europeană a Drepturilor Omului și cauzele istorice ale acestui mod de interpretare. În același ...timp, am identificat principalele greutăți și contragreutăți cu care operează Curtea în contextul interpretării Convenției, arătând că procesul în discuție seamănă cu un exercițiu de echilibristică, în cadrul căruia sunt puse în balanță diverse tehnici de interpretare. Am analizat interpretarea efectivă a Convenției, respectiv interpretarea sa evolutivă în contextul aplicării teoriei marjei de apreciere și a numitorului comun al statelor, precum și teoria obligațiilor pozitive. În concluzie, am arătat că interpretarea Convenției pare să fie ,,dezechilibrată” în direcția protecției efective a drepturilor fundamentale, ceea ce este preferabil față de o interpretare ,,echilibrată”, care să ne lase vulnerabili în fața abuzurilor statale.
Abstract
Positive obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights can be framed with different levels of concreteness. The level chosen is essential for understanding the analytical ...distinction between the existence of an obligation and its breach. The level of concreteness is an important conceptual framework because it has an impact even on the possibility of making an assessment as to whether the State has breached the obligation, and on how this assessment is performed in the reasoning. Kurt v Austria is used to illustrate how positive obligations can be framed both in more abstract and concrete terms, and how the reasoning mediates between the two. The more it tilts towards a concrete formulation of the obligation, the more the Court appears to assume the role of a rule-maker, which is in tension with the principle that States have discretion as to the concrete measures to fulfill their positive obligations.
This paper examines the legal framework for the protection of human rights in situations of extreme crisis in the European legal area, in order to achieve a coherent understanding of legal standards ...that will lead to their more uniform application. Through an in-depth analysis of the meaning and scope of the provisions of Article 15 of the European Convention, as well as the corresponding practice of the European Court of Human Rights, the authors determine under what conditions the suspension of certain rights and freedoms is legally permissible, and which state measures adopted in extraordinary circumstances represent the protection of the public interest, and which go beyond the scope of the most necessary measure required by the given situation and represent a violation of the rights and freedoms of the individual. This work is based on the idea that specific limitations for the enjoyment of human rights are necessary and justified. It is a well-known that only a limited number of human rights are absolute and as such are immune to any restrictions regardless of the circumstances and justifications. However, this does not reduce the need for the measures that the state resorts to in times of crisis to be strictly controlled.
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The Court of Justice of the European Union has arrived! Gone are the days of hagiography, when in the eyes of the academy and informed observers the Court could do no wrong. The pendulum has finally ...swung the other way. The judicial darling, if there is one today, is Strasbourg, not Luxembourg. Not hours had passed before the Court's 258-paragraph long
Opinion 2/13
on the Draft Agreement on EU Accession to the European Convention on Human Rights was condemned as “exceptionally poor.” Critical voices have mounted steadily ever since, leading to nothing short of widespread “outrage.”
'Cosmopolitan Europe', the normative commitment that is widely understood to undergird the project of the European Union, is under threat as never before. This is manifest perhaps most prominently in ...Europe's collective failure to respond to the refugee crisis. As people flee war and destruction, we, in Europe, debate whether now is the time to give up on our human rights commitments. France is under a state of emergency and the UK in the process of withdrawing from the European Union and its associated institutions (including the European Convention on Human Rights). Voices have been raised against the burdens, financial and social, placed upon us by those we see as Other, with few public voices calling for Europe to remember its traditions of hospitality and stated commitments to human rights. In this article, I discuss the growing distance between the claims and practices of European cosmopolitanism, its roots in our shared colonial past, and the implications for the future.
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BFBNIB, DOBA, FZAB, GIS, IJS, IZUM, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, ODKLJ, OILJ, PILJ, PNG, PRFLJ, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Islamic headscarves continue to be one of the most controversial issues concerning Muslims across Europe. In order to analyse how the headscarf is evaluated through the prism of human rights values ...and moral principles in Europe, this article revisits some headscarf cases heard at the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). The weaknesses in the rulings have been widely examined but this article will focus on the religious individual, her agency, and the link between her and her associated group, which have been less discussed in the literature. The article highlights that the modern socio-political structure of the Council of Europe countries is strikingly different from that of their pre-modern counterparts. Thus, the contours of religious groups, the link between an individual and her associated group, and the positioning of various religious groups vis-a-vis the state require a set of approaches to a religious claim centred on the individual believer. This can be clearly observed in the theoretical underpinnings of the European Convention on Human Rights, which, however, are not pursued adequately in practice because the actual rulings not only involve logic but also include perception.
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