Same-Sex Marriage and Registered Partnerships critiques the interpretive approach of the Strasbourg Court to rights to marriage and registered partnership for same-sex couples under Articles 8, 12, 14 and Article 1 of Protocol 12 European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), encompassing the findings in Fedotova and the post-Fedotova jurisprudence.
It engages with natural law human rights theory and moral philosophy to provide insights into the underpinning normativity of rights to union-formalisation and marriage in light of the fundamental norms that inform the ECHR and international human rights more broadly.
The book examines a current controversy in international human rights law, assessing the impact of Russia’s withdrawal from the Council of Europe and the rise of conservative cultural nationalism on the legitimacy of the European human rights system. Using doctrinal and moral-legal theory, it argues for a more nuanced application of the European consensus doctrine and distinguishes principled incrementalism from the Court’s increasingly indefensible position on same-sex marriage.
