The European Convention on Human Rights is often presented in Britain as a proud national inheritance. Yet this familiar narrative sits uneasily with the historical record. The Convention accepted by the Attlee government was a tightly bounded document, imagined as a limited safeguard against the abuses of totalitarian regimes—not as the foundation of a far-reaching supranational court with the authority to reshape domestic law. The key argument of this research seminar, led by Yuan Yi Zhu and drawing on his recent joint work with Conor Casey, is that the deep tensions surrounding the ECHR today stem from this historical divergence. As the Strasbourg Court expanded its authority, the Convention gradually ceased to reflect the assumptions of its British drafters. A system once designed as a safeguard against totalitarian abuses has evolved into a far broader legal order, often operating at odds with national democratic choices. The seminar explores whether claims of a “British legacy” still offer a valid basis for the UK’s commitment to the Convention, or whether they overlook how much the ECHR system has changed over the past seventy-five years.
Guest: Yuan Yi Zhu – Assistant Professor at Leiden University, specializing in UK and Commonwealth constitutional law, judicial power, and public law history.
Date: 10 January 2026, 5:30 pm
Venue: Budapest, 1113 Tas vezér utca 3-7., Kinizsi Pál Room
Az esemény nyilvános, de előzetes regisztrációhoz kötött:
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MCC students can earn credit for actively participating in the event, provided they read the required chapters and paper(s) and prepare three questions for the Q&A session of the research seminar.
Questions related to the required reading must be submitted to Kálmán Pócza at pocza.kalman@mcc.hu by 11:00 PM on 18 January, 2026.
Required Reading: Please contact Kálmán Pócza to obtain the electronic version of the paper.
Submission Deadline: 18 January 2026, 11:00 PM
Previous Research Seminars:
- Martin Loughlin (London School of Economics): Against Constitutionalism
- Nigel Biggar (Univeristy of Oxford): What’s Wrong with Rights?
- Asanga Welikala (University of Edinburgh): The Common Good and Comparative Constitutional Laws
- John Wyatt (Faraday Institute Cambridge): Right To Die?
- John Larkin (former Attorney General for Northern Ireland): Judicial Power in the United Kingdom
- Michael Freeden (University of Oxford): Concealed Silences and Inaudible Voices in Political Thinking
- Lee J. Strang (Ohio State University): Originalism's Promise: A Natural Law Account of the American Constitution
- Gonzalo Candia (Catholic University of Chile): The Constitution-Making Process in Chile 2019-2024
- Sergio Verdugo (IE University of Madrid): Is it time to abandon the theory of constituent power?
- Aileen Kavanagh (Trinity College Dublin): The Collaborative Constitution
- Scott L. Cummings (University of California Los Angeles): Lawyers and Movements
- Stephen Tierney (University of Edinburgh): Constituent Power in Federal States
- Stefan Auer (University of Hong Kong): European Disunion: Democracy, Sovereignty and the Politics of Emergency
- Dieter Grimm (Wissenschaftskolleg Berlin): A View from the Bench: Personal Reflections on the Practice of Constitutional Adjudication
- Yuan Yi Zhu (University of Leiden): Revisiting the British Origins of the European Convention on Human Rights
2026. január 20. 17:30 - 19:30
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