Jens T. Theilen has published with Nomos a book titled European Consensus between Strategy and Principle: The Uses of Vertically Comparative Legal Reasoning in Regional Human Rights Adjudication. The book is open access and can be downloaded for free here.
Here is a short abstract of the book:
‘This study offers a critical account of the reasoning employed by the
European Court of Human Rights, particularly its references to European
consensus. Based on an in-depth analysis of the Court’s case-law
against the backdrop of human rights theory, it will be of interest to
both practitioners and theorists.
While European consensus is
often understood as providing an objective benchmark within the Court’s
reasoning, this study argues to the contrary that it forms part of the
very structures of argument that render human rights law indeterminate.
It suggests that foregrounding consensus and the Court’s legitimacy
serves to entrench the status quo and puts forward novel ways of
approaching human rights to enable social transformation.’
