Katarína Šipulová

Searching for a Reference: Using Automated Text Analysis to Study Judicial Compliance

The concept of judicial compliance has attracted plenty of attention in the last two decades. Yet, despite the growing scholarly interest, important research questions remain largely unresolved. This is partly due to the persistent use of unsystematic research, built on the cherry picking of cases. The content of only a few well-known judgments has been thoroughly examined, and the rest remains largely ignored by the legal scholarship. The aim of this article is to introduce a sketch of a new three-level approach for improving research on judicial compliance in a multi-level arena. We show how the use of automated text analysis in combination with more traditional legal methods might shed more light on the concept of judicial compliance and judicial dialogues. We explain the procedure of the automated collection of data and their coding and also point out the risks of using automated text analysis when studying judicial compliance. The approach is demonstrated on a single case study of the use of European Court of Human Rights rulings by Czech apex courts. This study assesses how often and in what way the domestic courts engage with the European Court of Human Rights case law.

Výzkum lidských práv: Kritická reflexe současných přístupů

Ctyři vybrane publikace totiž vhodně ilustruji soucasne relevantni pozice kritických pohledů na mezinarodni lidskopravni režimy. Samuel Moyn (2014b, Human Rights and the Uses of History) zastupuje pohled kritických historiků, Eric Posner (2014, The Twilight of Human Rights Law) perspektivu pravniků s přesahem do mezinarodnich vztahů, Risse, Ropp a Sikkink (2013, The Persistent Power of Human Rights) a kolektiv politologů a teoretiků mezinarodnich vztahů a konecně Follesdal, Schaffer, Ulfstein (2013, The Legitimacy of International Human Rights Regimes) a dalsi přistup filosofů a pravnich teoretiků. Zaroveň take vybirame tyto knihy proto, že ukazuji různorodost soucasných přistupů – od empirických přes teoreticke až po kriticke. Rovněž teoreticka perspektiva přinasi znacnou diferencovanost, knihy zahrnuji jak zastupce konstruktivistických (Risse, Ropp a Sikkink et al.), tak neorealistických (Posner) přistupů. Na zakladě vybraných publikaci předestirame argumenty a proti-argumenty ze soucasne debaty o mezinarodnich lidských pravech, ktera ve srovnani s dřivějsimi lety přesla do kritictějsiho tonu. Argumenty, ktere prosakuji vybranými publikacemi autorských kolektivů, se daji rozdělit do tři velkých okruhů: (1) kriticka reflexe samotne podstaty a legitimity mezinarodnich lidskopravnich režimů a jejich nastaveni a obsahu, (2) kritika a obhajoba jejich fungovani a působeni, a konecně (3) reflexe soucasneho výzkumu mezinarodnich lidskopravnich režimů.

DH v Czech Republic Six Years Later: On the Power of an International Human Rights Court to Push through Systemic Change

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) is often portrayed as the most developed regional human rights court, one which wields the power to influence practices in its Member States. In 2007, the Grand Chamber of the Court issued a famous ruling in the case DH v Czech Republic, which condemned discrimination of Roma children in education. The problem criticized in the DH case is of a systemic character; in order to comply with the ECtHRs judgment, the Czech Republic would have to change its whole system of primary education. In our article, we discuss the ability of an international human rights body to push through a significant change in one of its Contracting Parties. We seek to draw more general propositions from the case study of DH v Czech Republic which can be tested by further studies – we try to identify factors and circumstances which support or hinder an international human rights court in its effort of pushing through a systemic change.

Reservations to Human Rights Treaties: A Case Study on the Practice of Czechoslovakia and Its Successor States

Conformity with human rights norms is currently a standard component of democratic states’ policies. However, this conformity is reflected not only in domestic binding catalogues of human rights embodied in constitutions, but also in the continuous rise of international control and treaty commitments. States are widely expected to commit to and ratify international human rights documents. Nevertheless, a great deal of the research on state commitments disregards the effects and changes which might be brought upon these ratifications by the submission of reservations. This article proposes an in-depth analysis of state commitments and the practice of submitting reservations in two case studies: the Czech Republic and Slovakia, together with their common predecessor, communist (and, briefly, democratic) Czechoslovakia, and maps the way these regimes, in their different stages of transitional development, worked with reservations.