Contenu du sommaire

The Marrakech Pact on Migration has been a source of controversy in the world and the European Union. It is clear however that this “soft law” instrument is devoid of force and is essentially an innovative framework.

The protean concept of legitimacy refers to both « legal » legitimacy and legitimacy « by assent ». The legitimacy of the Strasbourg judge has an individual dimension, concerning both his or her status and exercise of functions, and a collective one, addressing the efficiency of the Court, its mission to develop human rights while respecting its subsidiary role vis-à-vis the national authorities. Questions about possible reforms that can reinforce the Court's legitimacy have also to be asked

The principle of mutual trust is a principle of fundamental importance in European Union law. It allows an area without internal borders to be created and maintained, without the removal of the national legal systems' singularities. This principle is based on the existence of a community of values shared by the Member States. However, the European Union is currently facing a 'crisis of values', which reveals deep divisions among Member States as to their meaning and scope. This article examines the fate of mutual trust in the face of such crisis. In particular, it critically assesses and questions the limits recognised to the duty of mutual trust in presence of a risk of erosion of EU's founding values.

After a reminder about the concept of 'femi(ni)cide', the article analyses the question of its legal recognition in Latin America, as well as the contribution made by the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights. Then, the article focuses more specifically on the Belgian and French situations. Finally, it assess the impact of the creation of a specific offense of 'femi(ni)cide' on women rights' protection.

The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide approved by the General Assembly of the United Nations on 9 December 1948 limited the nomenclature of the protected groups on the basis of the sole following criteria: national, racial, religious and ethnical. This excludes therefore political groups. Yet many crimes of extermination presenting the constituent elements of the crime of genocide were committed by States that qualify as political groups. The aim of the present article is to analyze the legitimacy of this exclusion which generates a refusal of legal protection of these groups by the Convention of 1948.

This periodical review of the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States focuses on the most important decisions of the last two terms. The cases deal with issues such as discrimination against homosexuals, Trump's travel ban, privacy, police violence and racism in the criminal justice system.

Number 4 of this chronicle pursues the study of soft law in the specific field of human rights, in particular through its interactions with the hard law. Without denying the importance of conceptual thinking about the outlines – still uncertain – of the soft law, this chronicle opts for an empirical approach that attempts to highlight the multiple interactions between soft and hard law that shape contemporary law.

This article presents the ways Canadian and European courts (European Court of Human Rights) deal with the visibility of religious symbols worn by users of the judicial system in tribunals. Such a comparative perspective underlines similar and diverse trends in both jurisdictions. In Canada, the courts support a liberal vision of secularism, by strongly reaffirming the guarantee of freedom of conscience and religion, even if this perspective may interfere, and even conflict, with other rights such as the right to a fair trial of the other parties. Meanwhile, the European Court of Human Rights condemns States when they restrict, excessively, the wearing of religious symbols within tribunals. Still, by doing so, the ECHR reveals keyindications to establish prohibitions in accordance with the European Convention.

In 2018, the United Nations Human Rights Committee issued Views in three individual communications against France and Turkey. In different contexts and for different facts, the Committee was called to rule on the compatibility between the prohibition of the wearing of different religious symbols and the freedom to manifest one's religion at work, at university or in the public space (article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights). While its position is not surprising in view of its longstanding interpretation of the provision, its « intersectional »/« intersected » approach to discrimination prohibited by article 26 of the Covenant is a new element of its work on discrimination and equality. On the merit, the three decisions are in contradiction with the case law of the European Court on Article 9 of the ECHR, which is not, in itself, open to criticism. Nevertheless, the flaws in the Committee's reasoning and motivation are more so, especially in view of the importance of the issues raised.

On October 25, 2018, that is, twenty-four years after the Otto-Preminger-Institut v. Austria case, the European Court of Human Rights delivered a judgment E.S. v. Austria in which it took over almost word for word the argument of 1994 : blasphemy is still not protected. One had thought that the Otto-Preminger case-law had been gradually – at least implicitly – abandoned, or that it would be applied in a more liberal way. But the 2018 judgment ruined these hopes. The purpose of this article is to deconstruct the Court's argumentation, in particular by introducing the distinction between captive and voluntary audiences, which, if it had been taken seriously, would have been less obviously fatal to freedom of expression.

Delivered on 9 November 2018, the judgment in the case of Beuze v. Belgium provides further clarification to the post-Salduz case-law of the European Court of Human Rights. It also illustrates an ever more pronounced tendency of the Grand Chamber to prefer to assess the fairness of the procedure in a flexible way rather than in the light of rigid principles.