CYIL 2014

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PAVEL BUREŠ

CYIL 5 ȍ2014Ȏ

including its specific branches. The regional system of human rights protection is not

an exception.

Formed by an institutionalized mechanism of the European Convention

of human rights and its Court, this particular legal system of regional protection should

be organic as well. Human rights protection, especially when it is systematized by an

international instrument such as the European Convention, is not floating in a legal

vacuum. Even particular human rights, even though they are listed separately in specific

articles of the Convention, form an organic body of protection, all of them being

covered in a notion of human dignity phenomenon. And the evolution of specific

rights included in the system, if there is some evolution, should not endanger this

organic structure and should conserve the unity of the system.

An institutionalized version of the European protection of human rights was

conceived in the aftermath of the Second World War as a reaction to all atrocities

having resulted from State dictatorship and totalitarianism, in order to face a future

potential failure of States with respect to the protection of human dignity.The European

Convention gathered in its Articles 2 to 14 a minimal standard of the protection of

human rights.

These articles, although conceived separately and protecting different

kinds of human rights, some of them being of absolute and others of relative character,

form a unique body of instruments – rights relating to human dignity. Some rights

are more connected to the very existence of human beings (right to life, interdiction

of torture, prohibition of slavery, right to liberty), others stress more their existence

in social relationships in their private and public dimension (right to respect private

and family life, right to marry, liberty of expression, freedom of assembly), and

others ensure the latter and former in their procedural aspect (right to a fair trial, no

punishment without law, right to an effective remedy, prohibition of discrimination

This dual dimension of core human rights (the sole existence of human beings and the

social relationships between them) should form the substantial point of human rights

law protection, and thus absolutely reflects a combined philosophical conception

by Aristotle and St. Thomas, who spoke about being in the sense of substance and

in the sense of a relation.

A human being cannot be perceived in its entirety if one

of these two components – substance or relation – is missing or is corrupted. This

also confirms the Judaeo-Christian origin of human rights as they are presented by

the European and North American civilisations. Human rights in their origin –

ius

naturae

– are protecting (should protect) human beings in their entirety. This means

As the subtitle indicates the article will focus on the case law of the European Court of Human rights.

So we put aside other regional mechanisms of human rights protection. However, the final outcomes

can be used in a general way for these mechanisms as well.

One cannot forget that there were several amendments to this list in the form of additional protocols

to the Convention, ensuring e.g. the right to property, right to be educated, interdiction of collective

expulsion.

Discrimination as such, even though perceived more as substantial right than procedural one, presents its

procedural features. If a lack of discrimination can promote and strengthen both groups, discrimination

can rather stop it.

However, this second conception was not further developed in the work of St. Thomas. See e.g. Clarke,

W. Norris,

Osoba a Bytí

. [Person and Being] Krystal OP, Karmelitánské nakladatelství, 2007, p. 117.