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6 - Reassembling the French State via Human Rights: Between Human Rights Internationalism and Political Sovereignism

from Part I

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 June 2018

By
Mikael Rask Madsen
Edited by
Marlene Wind
Marlene Wind
Affiliation:
University of Copenhagen
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Summary

This chapter analyses how the growing force of particularly the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has reassembled the French State. It argues that the development of the relationship between France and European human rights is hardly a linear development but rather one marked by a schism between internationalism and sovereignism that is both historical and contemporary. The chapter suggests that three stages can be observed with regard to the reception of international and European human rights in France. The first period is marked by export and national refusal of international human rights as a matter of domestic politics, lasting until roughly the mid-1970s. The second period is characterised by a burgeoning domestic political interest but still marked by an autonomous domestic interpretation of rights within the legal field, lasting until mid- to late 2000s. And the third period is marked by the mainstreaming of ECHR norms – at least on substantive matters – into the French legal field. In conclusion, the analysis points to the new Euro-scepticism in France and its possible implications for the Strasbourg institutions and their role in France.

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Chapter
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International Courts and Domestic Politics , pp. 139 - 159
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2018

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