The Struggle Concerning Interpretative Authority in the Context of Human Rights – The Belgian Experience

Abstract

This Chapter deals with Belgian experiences with conflicts relating to human rights and fundamental freedoms, and especially with conflicts between various norms containing such rights or limitations to such rights. The author discusses in general the relationship between domestic rules in general (statutes), the Constitution and international norms. He further argues that, due to the proliferation of human rights, many more conflicts between human rights arise and in most of those conflicts between human rights, the maximalisation principle does not work. In countries with strong constitutional guarantees of liberties, giving supremacy to international law does actually restrict these liberties, as can be seen in Belgium. The chapter further deals with possible wars between courts when the interpretative authority is fragmented over different courts.