Juridification through Rights: How the European Court of Human Rights Shapes Higher Education (A 4-E Framework)

• In Event: Human Rights and Decolonial Perspectives

Proposal

Background and Rationale
Juridification has been extensively studied in national contexts, but its dynamics within international organizations remain less understood. Higher education offers an important case where international courts, particularly the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), increasingly shape governance by translating conflicts into rights-based claims. This paper examines how the ECtHR engages with universities, students, and academics, and introduces a 4-E framework—Expansion, Entanglement, Elaboration, and Effects—to conceptualize juridification through rights in higher education. The paper asks how the ECtHR has engaged with higher education in its jurisprudence, through what mechanisms juridification occurs, and what consequences these dynamics have for governance and policy in European higher education.

Conceptual Framework: The 4-E Approach
The framework identifies four dimensions of juridification. Expansion refers to the widening scope of human rights oversight in higher education. Entanglement captures the way rights such as education, non-discrimination, expression, and private life are increasingly interconnected. Elaboration concerns the consolidation of precedents, as legal reasoning is refined across cases. Finally, Effects focuses on the diffusion of norms, agenda-setting, and the influence of Court rulings on national legislation, institutional practices, and broader public debates. Taken together, these dimensions provide an analytical lens for understanding juridification through rights in transnational settings.

Methods and Data
The study analyzes 25 ECtHR cases on higher education decided between 1968 and 2023, identified through the HUDOC and HUDOC EXEC databases. A mixed-methods design was employed. Case law was examined using the IRAC method to trace legal reasoning and identify rights interactions. Social network analysis mapped 413 citations among 315 connected cases to assess the consolidation of precedents. Policy documents and national action reports were analyzed to evaluate how judgments have been implemented and whether they produced legal or institutional changes.

Findings
The analysis shows clear evidence of juridification across all four dimensions. Expansion is visible in the growing number of cases, especially after 2000, and in the increasing reliance on rights arguments in higher education disputes. Entanglement is evident in the frequent combination of the right to education with civil and political rights, such as non-discrimination, freedom of expression, or private and family life. Elaboration emerges through the centrality of landmark cases such as Belgian Linguistic and Leyla Şahin, which established principles of access, recognition, and proportionality that continue to structure subsequent jurisprudence. Effects are seen in three main ways: the diffusion of legal norms into domestic courts and legislation, the agenda-setting role of judgments in shaping policy debates (for instance, on secularism, language rights, and LGBTQIA+ issues), and direct influence through compensation, constitutional reform, and institutional regulation.

Discussion & Contribution
The 4-E framework demonstrates that juridification through rights is a multidimensional and cumulative process. The ECtHR does more than resolve isolated disputes: it gradually transforms the governance of higher education by expanding its reach, entangling rights in more complex ways, elaborating coherent precedents, and producing effects beyond the courtroom. Universities thus become constitutional arenas where broader societal conflicts about democracy, equality, and freedom are played out and judicially mediated. The paper contributes conceptually by introducing the 4-E framework as a new way of understanding juridification through rights. Empirically, it offers the first systematic mapping of ECtHR case law on higher education, highlighting how jurisprudence in this field has evolved over five decades. Analytically and normatively, it sheds light on how rights-based adjudication reshapes the balance between institutional autonomy, equality, and accountability in European higher education, raising important questions for policymakers, universities, and rights-holders. Thus, this study shows that the ECtHR has become a pivotal actor in the juridification of higher education. Through the dynamics of expansion, entanglement, elaboration, and effects, the Court embeds universities into Europe’s human rights order and influences both national and institutional governance. The 4-E framework provides a transferable tool for analyzing juridification in other international or sectoral contexts, demonstrating how courts operate as engines of rights-based governance beyond the nation-state.

Author

• Marcelo Marques, University of Luxembourg