Whither Sovereignty? Norway in Strasbourg 1949-1950

While the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 marked a breakthrough for the idea that “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights”, the signing of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) in November 1950 marked a watershed in the history of human rights, as this convention was the first human rights convention that was legally binding for those states that chose to ratify it. One of the most contested issues during the negotiations to establish the ECHR was the nature and scope of the institutions that were to enforce the measures that were included in the final convention. Some states wanted the new human rights regime to include an international court with compulsory jurisdiction as well as a right to individual petition. Other states strongly opposed such proposals. According to Andrew Moravcsik’s influential study of the origins of the ECHR, a particular government’s decision to support the establishment of an international court with a right to individual petition is a function of the relative significance of the crosscutting considerations of sovereignty costs and the need to reduce future political uncertainty: “Only where democracy is established but nondemocratic groups (military officers, communists, fascists, and religious fundamentalists, for example) pose real threats to its future is the reduction of political uncertainty likely to outweigh the inconvenience of supranational adjudication” (2000, p. 229). Norway was among a group of well-established democracies, e.g. the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Sweden and Denmark, that opposed including such enforcement measures in the new convention. This paper aims to explain the Norwegian skepticism. It is a theory-informed case study of the Norwegian position during the negotiations to establish the ECHR in general and her attitude to the issue of a European human rights court in particular. It is based on archival material from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Justice, as well as secondary sources.