A Political Decision Disguised as Legal Argument? Opinion 2/13 and European Union Accession to the European Convention on Human Rights

• Author: Graham Butler
• Position: PhD Fellow, Centre for Comparative and European Constitutional Studies, Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen (Denmark)
• Pages: 104-111

Graham Butler, ‘A Political Decision Disguised as Legal Argument? Opinion 2/13

and European Union Accession to the European Convention on Human Rights’

(2015) 31(81) Utrecht Journal of International and European Law 104, DOI:

http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/ujiel.df

INTERVIEW

A Political Decision Disguised as Legal Argument?

Opinion 2/13 and European Union Accession to the

European Convention on Human Rights

Interview with David Thór Björgvinsson, Professor of Law, Centre of Excellence

for International Courts (iCourts), Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen,

Denmark, and former Judge of the European Court of Human Rights

Graham Butler*

David Thór Björgvinsson was a judge of the European Court of Human Rights between 2004and

2013. During this period, he was involved in many important judgments, including

Scoppolav

Italy (No. 3)

,1

Eweida and others v United Kingdom

,2 and

Al-Jedda v the United Kingdom

,3

amongst others, and went on to serve as Vice-President of the Fourth Section. He has degrees

from the University of Iceland, Duke University School of Law, and the University of Stras-

bourg, and is currently a Professor of Law at the Centre of Excellence for International Courts

(iCourts) at the Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. In this interview, carried

out in June 2015 for the Utrecht Journal of International and European Law, David Thór Björg-

vinsson outlined his views to Graham Butler on Opinion 2/13 from the Court of Justice of the

European Union on the Union’s accession to the European Convention on Human Rights,4 the

workings of the European Court of Human Rights, and what the future may have in store for

this Court.

Keywords: European Union law; Court of Justice of the European Union; Human rights law;

European Convention on Human Rights; European Court of Human Rights

1. You were an academic in Iceland, as well as someone who had spent some time working in an

international court before being elected a judge of the European Court of Human Rights. You’re

now settled back into academia as a Professor of Law at the University of Copenhagen. With this

blend of both academic and practical experience, tell us about your journey, and how these different

experiences have shaped your views on the law.

My whole career has been a mixture of practical and academic work. A long time ago now, I was working

at the EFTA Court in Geneva when it was established there. Then it was five countries, but was subsequently

reduced after some states became Member States of the European Union. I was there for three years work-

ing as a référendaire for the then Icelandic judge Thór Vilhjálmsson, who at the same time was also a judge

in Strasbourg. The role of a judge at the EFTA Court in Geneva was a full-time position, but his position

as a judge in Strasbourg was part-time, as it was before the ratification of Protocol 11 of the Convention

in 1998 which reconstructed the whole Strasbourg system. Following my first period at the EFTA Court,

I went back to the University of Iceland as a Professor, before then going back to EFTA Court (which had since

been relocated to Luxembourg) for a stretch of four years to work as a lawyer. I then returned to my native

* PhD Fellow, Centre for Comparative and European Constitutional Studies, Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen (Denmark).

1

Scoppola v Italy (No. 3) (2013) 56 EHRR 19.

2

Eweida and others v United Kingdom (2013) 57 EHRR 8.

3

Al-Jedda v the United Kingdom (2011) 53 EHRR 23.

4

Opinion 2/13 (2014) Accession of the European Union to the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fun-

damental Freedoms, (not yet reported).

UTRECHT JOURN

AL OF

INTERNATIONAL AND EUROPEAN LAW