The European human rights law from both the European Convention (and the jurisprudence of the ECtHR) has been heralded by many as one of the most successful international human rights regimes. Nevertheless, a key challenge for the continued success of the European human rights system is dependent, among other things, on the meaning institutionalization of human rights protections into domestic legal and political systems. But, do human rights become institutionalized domestically and if so, how and under what conditions?
While some scholarship considers institutionalization through courts and litigation, very little research has been conducted on whether national legislative processes are important to the process of domestic institutionalization. This paper seeks to fill this gap by exploring whether national parliament serves as venues where European human rights law becomes embedded in domestic law. Informed by existing literature on the institutionalization of international law and human rights, civil society actors are placed at the center of the analysis. Specifically, this paper asks: what role do civil society actors play in the domestic legislating of European human rights law and under what conditions can we expect them to be central to the domestic institutionalization of European human rights? Empirically, this is examined in the context of discrimination through legislation on the national minimum wage in the UK and religious discrimination in German legislation on religious symbols in schools.
