Laws born out of trauma: in defence of the EU’s conception of human rights

With both the EU and human rights demonised in public discourse, Catherine Dupré sets out to redeem the concepts from their critics. She argues that the EU’s conception of human rights, as codified in its Charter of Fundamental Rights, defines a set of absolute rights borne out of wartime trauma and transcending the limitations of a conception of the human that is driven by merely economic concerns. It protects the weak from exploitation at the hands of the powerful and offers a sophisticated judicial architecture through which citizens can exercise their rights.