The Truth in Autonomous Concepts: How To Interpret the ECHR George Letsas* Full text available: PDF format ** Abstract This paper addresses the role of the European Court of Human Rights in interpreting the European Convention on Human Rights and attacks the standard image in the literature that pictures judges as having, by default, a great amount of discretion in interpretation and a power to create new law. The Court's notion of 'autonomous concepts' is presented and analysed thoroughly, to show that substantive disagreement is widespread in law and that judges must necessarily make choices precisely out of respect for what the ECHR grants. The paper draws resources from Ronald Dworkin's philosophy and shows the affinities between the theory of 'autonomous concepts' and Dworkin's 'semantic sting' argument. It is argued that all concepts in the ECHR are autonomous, in the following two senses: first, people do not share the same linguistic criteria on how to identify their meaning; second, the correct meaning may radically transcend the way the ECHR concepts are classified and understood within the national legal order. Judges therefore have to construct substantive theories that aim at capturing the nature or purpose of the right involved and of the ECHR more generally. The paper concludes by urging scholars and judges to stop raising the threat of judicial discretion and work out general theories of adjudication for the ECHR. * University College London, Faculty of Laws ** The free viewer (Acrobat Reader) for PDF file is available at the Adobe Systems.
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