CYIL 2012

THE PROTECTION OF FUNDAMENTAL HUMAN RIGHTS AND FREEDOMS … Gerloch A., Šturma P. et al. The Protection of Fundamental Human Rights and Freedoms during Changes in Law in the outset of the 21 st Century in the Czech, European and International Contexts [Ochrana základních práv a svobod v proměnách práva na počátku 21. století v českém, evropském a mezinárodním kontextu] Auditorium, Praha 2011, 536 pp. This book is an extensive collective monograph and its content follows an international conference on the same topic held at the Charles University Faculty of Law in Prague, Czech Republic on May 18-19, 2011. The book’s chapters not only deal with various aspects of modifications of law and their impact upon the protection of human rights, but a primary focus in most of the chapters is the impact of a multifarious development of the concept of human rights and systems of their protection upon modifications of the law as such. There are several reasons for selecting such a focus and perspective for analysing the changes; however, the main reason seems to be the supra-positive nature of human rights and their position within international and constitutional law. An overall picture of this phenomenon is reflected in an extremely difficult role for the editors of the monograph to cope with, namely to create a purposeful and rational sequence of individual chapters. It should be noted that this book represents a successful outcome in this respect. The book is divided into three basic chapters, the first two being subdivided into subchapters. The first chapter outlines the position of human rights in the constitutional system of the Czech Republic and partially in the Slovak Republic (as a result of Slovak experts’ co-authoring); the other two chapters attempt to internationalize these perspectives, focusing on one of the serious issues, namely the so-called dual European system of human rights protection, which is far from being solved even after the effect of the Lisbon Treaty and its relevant provisions. To the contrary, more questions have been posed and issues raised; today we are still expecting a response from the cooperative judicial practice of the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the European Union. I would argue in this context that procedural issues will not be the most important although they might substantially exhaust both judicial institutions. The creation of a compact and compatible system of human rights protection has been one of the issues which may be, within the modifying law as a system, designated as a route from enforceability of the law to its unenforceability, or the other way around. The perspective of enforceability/unenforceability of human rights may result in a certain opposition to the assertion that “the enrichment and differentiation of the catalogue of human rights leads to holding down the theory of so-called generations of human rights by the conception of universality, indivisibility, interdependence

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