Research seminar with Patrick Leisute about ECtHR’s cases concerning schools

Roe v. Wade may be the most discussed SCOTUS ruling right now, but there are other seminal rulings whose legacy is still alive – like Brown v. Board of Education. What does this ruling have in common with ECtHR’s D.H. and Others vs. the Czech Republic or Lautsi and Others vs. Italy? The subject of these (as well as other) cases are schools and its students, and they all made quite a splash when they came out. In fact, the waves are still felt to this day. On Monday, 9 May, a guest speaker Patrick Leisure tried to persuade JUSTINs that, similarly to SCOTUS, the ECtHR’s cases concerning schools have had a distinct and profound impact on human rights and that for this reason, the schools case law deserves to be treated as a distinct category of case law. His working hypothesis is that the academic versus social function of schools may provide some semblance of an answer, particularly where the issue in the schooling case concerns a social issue that the Council of Europe endorses (e.g. antidiscrimination).