Practice Areas

Because these are often vague, it falls on effective lawyer-advocates to develop the jurisprudence of international tribunals on what exactly the human rights norms should cover, and how they should protect them. At the core of this system lie some general principles on protecting people’s dignity, and treating them fairly and equally. We would like to help our clients to explore how human rights law can help them remedy the various forms of injustices they suffered. International treaties are a powerful instrument, they can level the playing field between a single individual and the all-powerful state apparatus they are facing, even if the domestic law is against them. However, to be successful, an intimate knowledge of international procedure and the substantive law of various jurisdictions is necessary. This litigation often entails overcoming existing law, by creating new precedents to the benefit of many other people in a similar situation.

Examples include convincing the European Court of Human Rights to award the right to vote of persons with mental disabilities previously disenfranchised; recognising the procedural and substantive problems related to guardianship; holding that a person restrained by staff in a sobering-up centre was indeed ill-treated, even though the domestic investigation was closed for lack of evidence; declaring that a government decision to set aside the results of a local referendum was arbitrary and discriminatory; or extending the right to education to children with severe disabilities, who were excluded from schools until then. The list is potentially endless: the right to equal treatment, and the right to private life, protected by Articles 14 and 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights, can apply to several aspects of human relationships which have not been discovered by the courts yet. Our expertise is to help find an appropriate international human rights tribunal, instrument, and procedure to the injustice suffered by our clients which could not be remedied by the domestic courts using domestic law.