The multilevel Protection of Fundamental Rights — The Significance of the Judgments of the European Court of Human Rights in the Reasoning of the Constitutional Court

Abstract

Multilevel protection of fundamental rights is an integral part of the concept of multilevel constitutionalism, which is now widely accepted. Multilevel constitutionalism is a constitutional reality that is manifested through the multiplication of constitutional principles, values, and norms, as well as through continuous interaction, particularly between international and national courts. In practice, this appears partly as the migration of constitutional ideas and partly as constitutional dialogue. The multilevel protection of fundamental rights is fundamentally realized through the case law of the European Court of Human Rights, which has a significant impact on the decisions of national constitutional courts and the reasoning contained therein. Beyond a few theoretical observations and findings, the present contribution illustrates the role of the ECtHR in developing fundamental rights — both in terms of the constitutional court’s reasoning and the evolution of the legal system, with the aim of making the protection of fundamental rights more effective — using examples from the case law of the Constitutional Court of Romania.