Uncovering the Nature of ECHR Rights: An Analytical and Methodological Framework

While the practice of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has been the subject of much scholarly attention, one question has not yet been answered: how does the ECtHR understand the nature of human rights? The article develops a framework for the analysis of this question, and shows how it can be fruitfully applied. The first part identifies a gap at the intersection of doctrinal and philosophical approaches to human rights practice that leaves the ECtHR’s understanding of the nature of rights unaccounted for. The second part develops an analytic and methodological framework based on the idea of grounds, content, and scope of human rights to bridge this disciplinary divide and facilitate a more perspicuous analysis of the Court’s conception of the nature of human rights. The third part tests this framework by examining the Court’s doctrines in relation to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, and the right to free elections. The article thus explains why the analysis of the ECtHR’s understanding of the nature of human rights is important, provides the tools for such analysis, and shows how it can be conducted.