Next weekend the School of Law in UCD will hold two related events reflecting on the future of the European Court and European Convention on Human Rights. The first is a seminar by Deputy Registrar of the Court, and respected scholar on the Court and Convention, Michael O’Boyle. This seminar will take place at 6pm, Friday April 1st 2011 in the Humanities Institute in UCD. The title of the seminar is “The Future of the European Court of Human Rights”.  In his paper, Deputy Registrar O’Boyle will thus address the issue of institutional reform of the Court which has been confronting a case load crisis of massive proportions for years, raising questions about  its continued viability. The seminar is organised by the Human Rights Network and celebrates the launch, this year, of our LL.M in Human Rights about which you can find more information here. The seminar is open to all, but please do RSVP sinead.hennessy@ucd.ie

Then on Saturday April 2nd the PhD community at the School of Law will host a conference on the future of the Court and the Convention with speakers from Europe and North America. The full conference programme is posted here, but highlights include opening remarks from Justice John Hedigan, now of the Irish High Court and previously of the European Court of Human Rights. The conference takes the form of a workshop, with discussants for each session as well as general discussion on the papers. Papers from the workshop will be published as a special issue of the A-ranked German Law Journal, which will be guest edited by the two organising PhD candidates Kanstantsin Dzehtsiarou and Alan Greene. Again, all are welcome to attend the workshop.