Adjudicating migrant rights: Toward a ‘problem-based’ approach to the evaluation of the effectiveness of European courts

With the management of borders becoming increasingly problematic, supporters of migrant rights have looked to the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) to balance the security agenda of national and the European legislators. At the same time, a growing body of literature addresses the impact (or effectiveness) of international courts. The goal of this presentation will be to bring the two trends together, proposing and discussing the possibility of a ‘problem-based’ approach to this topic as applied to the precarious human rights situation of migrants and asylum seekers in Europe. A ‘problem-based’ impact evaluation of the European courts seeks to evaluate whether and to what extent they can contribute to social change in this domain. This presentation begins with a brief comparison of the framework to other approaches (e.g. functional or ‘goal-based’ evaluations). It will then describe the problem of migrant rights and its various theoretical explanations, its ‘legal manifestations’, as well as the methodological consequences of a ‘problem-based’ approach. The last part features some very preliminary results of my research applying the approach to two Dutch migration-related judgments of the CJEU.

Registration:
For participation in the event please use this registration form no later than 1 October 2014 11:00.

You are welcome to bring your own lunch bag.