The Venice Commission and the Human Rights Justifications

The HR Just project primarily focuses on how human rights arguments are used to justify various State actions. It is also however interesting to consider how States justify their departure from human rights (or rule of law) standards. Veronika Bílková builds on her experience in the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe, within which she has been repeatedly involved in discussions with States.

In the first part of the presentation, she will briefly introduce the work of the Venice Commission. In the second part, four main arguments conventionally put forward by States to justify departures from human rights or rule of law standards will be identified and examined:

• security argument,
• legitimacy argument,
• democracy argument,
• and necessity argument.

While these arguments are often used to shield States from justified criticism, they may have some merit, typically in the situation when a State seeks to rebuild a system after a period of human rights and rule of law backsliding.

Veronika Bílková is professor and head of the department of public international law at the Law Faculty of the Charles University in Prague and senior researcher at the Centre for International Law at the Institute of International Relations in Prague. Since 2010, she has been the member of the European Commission for Democracy Through Law of the Council of Europe on behalf of the Czech Republic. Her research focuses on the use of force, international humanitarian law, international criminal law, international human rights, and the rule of law. 

Please register for the event HERE. We look forward to seeing you there! 

Webinar Series Overview 
The Human Rights Justification: Empirical Webinar Series, part of the Horizon Europe HRJust project, explores how states invoke human rights to justify legislative and political decisions, focusing on climate change, migration, and COVID-19. The webinar series is organised by IIR research team members of the HRJust project, Dr Federica Cristani and Ms Barbora Lukešová. 

The series fosters knowledge sharing on these themes, emphasizing inclusive democracy, gender, intersectionality, and sociological and anthropological perspectives. You can find more information on the Intersect Observatory’s digital library.