How the Netherlands received the European Convention on Human Rights

The Convention and the Kingdom

The European Convention on Human Rights is nowadays one of the most prominent human rights treaties. In particular in the Netherlands, it has become the main legal tool for fundamental rights protection. As such, it has also found itself in the spotlight: pushback has developed against its perceived excessive constraining of political options and the European Court is being criticized for interference with domestic sensitivities. 

This roundtable, based on a new book by Wiebe Hommes, discusses these developments and highlights the usages of history in the current pushback against European human rights.

That the Convention today looks very different from what its drafters intended in 1950 is self-evident. To most, whether they defend or critique the European human rights system, this is the result of historical actions of the European Court itself. Wiebe Hommes’ book, The Convention and the Kingdom, tells a different story. Focusing on the Kingdom of the Netherlands, it highlights a range of new actors and showcases how the domestic context actively participated in the creation of European human rights.

In retelling the history of the Convention, it sheds light on forgotten paths, changes in meaning and key moments in which the future of European human rights was determined. Crucial therein is the fact that human rights were (and are) a matter which affected the entire Kingdom, harboring a colonial legacy which still shapes its present day meaning.

About the speakers

Wiebe Hommes is assistant professor of EU law and legal history at the University of Amsterdam. Trained as a lawyer and historian, his research aims to uncover hidden legacies and actors in the creation of law and shed light on their relevance to present day legal set-ups.

Sabine Mair is Assistant Professor of European Union law at the University of Amsterdam and researcher at the Amsterdam Centre for European Law and Governance (ACELG). Her current research focuses on socio-political and economic dimensions of EU law, combining doctrinal analysis with interdisciplinary methodological insights taken from the social sciences and humanities.

Antoine Vauchez is a CNRS Research Professor in political sociology and law and a member of the Centre européen de sociologie et science politique-CESSP (Université Paris 1-Sorbonne). Antoine Vauchez’s work lies at the intersection of the socio-history of transnational power habilitation. His main research themes are the formation of a European centre of power, the emergence of a body of legal and economic knowledge of the European project and the consolidation of a ‘power of independence’ around the European courts of justice, central banks and regulatory agencies.

Lynn Hillary works as an Assistant Professor at the department of Constitutional and Administrative Law at the University of Amsterdam. Her research interests are migration law, human rights and European public law. She is a member of the migration working group of the NJCM (ICJ the Netherlands), and a member of the Dutch Association on Migration Research and the Research Affiliates network of the Refugee Law Initiative.

Jacob Giltaij (moderator) is a legal historian, associate professor at the University of Amsterdam and managing director of the Paul Scholten Centre for Jurisprudence. His research interests entail the history of human rights, European integration. Recently, he was awarded an NWO grant to research the Roman Law roots of slavery in Suriname, Curaçao, Virginia and Chile.