The Limitation of Human Rights in the name of Morality: A Study of Case Law of the European Court of Human Rights

The thesis deals with the question of inter-normativity between the law and the moral in the specific context of limitation of human rights in the name of the moral and in the legal context created by the case law of the European Court of Human Rights. The European Convention of Human rights includes already a restriction to the protection brought by the moral. The topic of the thesis provides a much broader conceptualization of the phenomena. The notion of « limitative moral norm » can be used to cover all modes of the moral as a limitation of rights. This study analyses the introduction of the limitative moral norm in the European litigation and verifies its level of efficiency in the applicability of the Convention. The thesis establishes the axiological background of the European public policy in which the moral norm is evaluated. The moralist and paternalistic motifs are legally poor when it comes to justify the limitation of rights. However, the limitative moral norm becomes difficult to contest when it comes to protect the rights of others. Nevertheless, the interference zone between the moral and the protection of the other is changing. This latter factor becomes exclusively efficient in the context of emerging axiological conflicts, limiting the scope of the limitative moral norm to fields of classical regulation.