MULTIRIGHTS · The Legitimacy of Multi-level Human Rights Judiciary

The proliferation of human rights treaties at regional and global levels may offer moral foundations for international law. However, many worry that this growth of supervisory organs is illegitimate. Consider, for instance• The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) is overburdened.• The human rights organs may disagree e.g. on how to balance freedom of expression against protection from hate speech. Which should be obeyed?• Citizens of well-functioning democracies ask: why should such international organs intervene?The MultiRights team of international lawyers and political theorists will first scrutinize the claims of legitimacy deficits. We then consider reform proposals for global and European human rights organs: We develop four plausible models, ranging from Primacy of National Courts to a World Court of Human Rights. We will assess the models by four Contested Constitutional Principles of legitimacy, revised for our multilevel legal order: Human Rights values, the Rule of Law, Subsidiarity, and Democracy.MultiRights thereby provides reasoned comparative assessment of models for human rights regime reforms, and contributes to better standards of legitimacy for international institutions. The findings also help us understand and assess the alleged ‘Constitutionalisation of International Law” - an urgent topic under globalization, when governance beyond states increases in density and impact.The academic contributions of MultiRights will also benefit several reforms:• the Interlaken Process on how to improve the ECtHR,• the accession of the EU to the European Convention on Human Rights under the Lisbon Treaty,• the UN Secretary General’s calls to reform the Human Rights treaty body system, and• challenges to the democratic credentials of such human rights review.