This volume compiles the papers and comments delivered and the conclusions reached at the seminar "The Status of International Treaties on Human Rights", which was organised in Coimbra, Portugal, on 7 and 8 October 2005 by the Venice Commission in co-operation with the lus Gentium Coimbrigae Centre and the Faculty of Law of the University of Coimbra and the International Association of Constitutional Law (IACL).The reports analyses the specific features of international human rights treaties; the impact of state succession on these treaties; the territorial scope of human rights obligations; the position of human rights treaties in the national legal systems; the impact on the national systems of the obligation to comply with the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights; the criteria for establishing the hierarchy of legal rules in national and international law; the difference between jus cogens and core rights; and the protection of core rights through international jurisdiction or universal domestic jurisdiction.
