CYIL 2014

PAVEL BUREŠ CYIL 5 ȍ2014Ȏ including its specific branches. The regional system of human rights protection is not an exception. 2 Formed by an institutionalized mechanism of the European Convention of human rights and its Court, this particular legal system of regional protection should be organic as well. Human rights protection, especially when it is systematized by an international instrument such as the European Convention, is not floating in a legal vacuum. Even particular human rights, even though they are listed separately in specific articles of the Convention, form an organic body of protection, all of them being covered in a notion of human dignity phenomenon. And the evolution of specific rights included in the system, if there is some evolution, should not endanger this organic structure and should conserve the unity of the system. An institutionalized version of the European protection of human rights was conceived in the aftermath of the Second World War as a reaction to all atrocities having resulted from State dictatorship and totalitarianism, in order to face a future potential failure of States with respect to the protection of human dignity.The European Convention gathered in its Articles 2 to 14 a minimal standard of the protection of human rights. 3 These articles, although conceived separately and protecting different kinds of human rights, some of them being of absolute and others of relative character, form a unique body of instruments – rights relating to human dignity. Some rights are more connected to the very existence of human beings (right to life, interdiction of torture, prohibition of slavery, right to liberty), others stress more their existence in social relationships in their private and public dimension (right to respect private and family life, right to marry, liberty of expression, freedom of assembly), and others ensure the latter and former in their procedural aspect (right to a fair trial, no punishment without law, right to an effective remedy, prohibition of discrimination 4 ). This dual dimension of core human rights (the sole existence of human beings and the social relationships between them) should form the substantial point of human rights law protection, and thus absolutely reflects a combined philosophical conception by Aristotle and St. Thomas, who spoke about being in the sense of substance and in the sense of a relation. 5 A human being cannot be perceived in its entirety if one of these two components – substance or relation – is missing or is corrupted. This also confirms the Judaeo-Christian origin of human rights as they are presented by the European and North American civilisations. Human rights in their origin – ius naturae – are protecting (should protect) human beings in their entirety. This means 2 As the subtitle indicates the article will focus on the case law of the European Court of Human rights. So we put aside other regional mechanisms of human rights protection. However, the final outcomes can be used in a general way for these mechanisms as well. 3 One cannot forget that there were several amendments to this list in the form of additional protocols to the Convention, ensuring e.g. the right to property, right to be educated, interdiction of collective expulsion. 4 Discrimination as such, even though perceived more as substantial right than procedural one, presents its procedural features. If a lack of discrimination can promote and strengthen both groups, discrimination can rather stop it. 5 However, this second conception was not further developed in the work of St. Thomas. See e.g. Clarke, W. Norris, Osoba a Bytí . [Person and Being] Krystal OP, Karmelitánské nakladatelství, 2007, p. 117.

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