The ECHR and Human Rights Theory

The European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) has been relatively neglected in the field of normative human rights theory. This book aims to bridge the gap between legal theory and the practice of the ECHR. In order to do so it tests the two overarching approaches in human rights theory literature, the moral and the political, against the practice of the ECHR ‘system. The book addresses both the history of the ECHR and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) as an international legal and political institution and the history of the very concept of rights in the history of moral and political ideas.