Deep Impact through Soft Jurisprudence? The Contribution of United Nations Treaty Body Case Law to the Development of International Human Rights Law

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Basak Cali
• Subject Area: Public Law ; Principles of Law and Jurisprudence
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 492764790

This project will undertake the first comprehensive and systematic study of the contribution of the case law of the United Nations Treaty Bodies to international human rights law. These bodies are at the vanguard of IHRL, increasingly called on to adjudicate on the major contemporary and emerging human rights challenges of our time, but their case law remains under-studied. This research project will analyse the contribution of the United Nations Treaty Bodies case law to international human rights law through a leading cases approach and an interactional framework. The project will identify the leading cases with respect to all UN human rights treaty bodies covering both procedural and substantive human rights themes. It will then provide a doctrinal analysis of how leading UNTB cases contribute to the development of IHRL by way of studying the interactions between leading UNTB case law and the case law of regional human rights courts and commissions, the International Court of Justice and international criminal courts and tribunals. The findings of the study will culminate in a major monograph on Leading Cases in UN Human Rights Law, research articles, an international conference and a blog that will last beyond the duration of the project. The study will provide a comprehensive account of the role of human rights judgments of United Nations treaty bodies in international human rights law, making an original contribution to both the scholarship and the practice.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Netherlands
• Cooperation Partner: Dr. Alexandre Skander Galand