Abstract
This chapter examines the idea of ‘the individual’ that underpins European human rights law. It argues that this idea is comprised of two doctrines: presence and presentation. Presence is about the specificity of the individual, cast in terms of the unique sense of place and identity of an individual. Presentation is about the replaceability of this individual, and it is based on a representation of the individual through the terms of an alienable role or status. While these doctrines belong to the same idea of ‘the individual’, they are at odds with one another, to the point that their mediation instigates a crisis in the individual, whereupon it is revealed that the representation of ‘the individual’ is, in fact, a representation of replacement.
I am grateful to Damian Chalmers , Kai Möller, Chetan Bhatt , Emmanuel Melissaris and the participants in the LSE Law lunchtime seminar and the LSE-Essex-Cambridge Doctoral Research Triangle for their comments on an earlier version of this chapter, and to the participants in the Replacement conference and Naomi Segal for their comments on this version.
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Notes
- 1.
This has its origins in the systematisation of human rights in the mid-twentieth century, at which point the individual was envisaged as the end source of value and elevated accordingly within legal and political orders. The underpinning theory of the European Convention on Human Rights was, therefore, that of ‘restoring the primacy of the individual against the over powerful state’ (Simpson: 157). Post-war national constitutions took on a similar emphasis, focusing on individual freedom (e.g., Article 66 of the French Constitution), individual value (e.g., Judgment 118/1996, Italian Constitutional Court, para.5), and the core rights of the individual (e.g., Judgment 1 BvR 253/56 [1957], German Constitutional Court).
- 2.
E.g., 60333/00, Slyusarev v Russia (2010, ECtHR).
- 3.
E.g., 27473/02, Erdoğan Yağiz v Turkey (2007, ECtHR); Judgment 170/2014 (Italian Constitutional Court).
- 4.
E.g., 23380/09, Bouyid v Belgium (2015, ECtHR), para.104.
- 5.
E.g., 16064/90 et al., Varnava and Others v Turkey (2009, ECtHR).
- 6.
See e.g., 1 BvR 921/85 (1989) (German Constitutional Court), Part I, para.2.
- 7.
E.g., in visions of a child’s ‘best interests’: 41615/07, Neulinger and Shuruk v Switzerland (2010, ECtHR).
- 8.
E.g., 42393/98, Dahlab v Switzerland (2001, ECtHR).
- 9.
Judgment 198/2012 (Spanish Constitutional Court), para.7.
- 10.
Ibid., para.9.
- 11.
43835/11, S.A.S. v France (2014, ECtHR).
- 12.
Ibid., paras.81–85.
- 13.
E.g., 18136/02, Siebenhaar v Germany (2011, ECtHR); 56030/07, Fernández Martínez v Spain (2014, ECtHR).
- 14.
E.g., 29107/95, Stedman v UK (1997, ECtHR); 8160/78, Ahmad v UK (1981, ECtHR). Cf. 48420/10 et al., Eweida and Others v UK (2013, ECtHR), para.83.
- 15.
E.g., 9214/80 et al., Abdulaziz, Cabales and Balkandali v UK (1985, ECtHR), para.68.
- 16.
E.g., 1474/62 et al., Case ‘Relating to Certain Aspects on the Use of Languages in Education in Belgium’ v Belgium (1968, ECtHR), para.7.
- 17.
E.g., 36022/97, Hatton and Others v UK (2003, ECtHR), para.127 et seq.
- 18.
40031/98, Gnahoré v France (2000, ECtHR), para.59.
- 19.
E.g., 45071/09, Ahrens v Germany (2012, ECtHR); 23338/09, Kautzor v Germany (2012, ECtHR).
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Trotter, S. (2018). The ethos of replaceability in European human rights law. In: Owen, J., Segal, N. (eds) On Replacement. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76011-7_13
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