Ezgi Yildiz
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About Ezgi
Yildiz specializes in international courts and institutions, human rights and global norms, and ocean governance. She is an Assistant Professor of Government at Bowdoin College and a Research Associate at the Global Governance Center of the Geneva Graduate Institute. Her recent book, Between Forbearance and Audacity: The European Court of Human Rights and the Norm against Torture (Cambridge University Press, 2023), received the APSA Human Rights Best Book Award and an Honorable Mention for the ISA’s Chadwick F. Alger Prize. She was a postdoctoral fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard Kennedy School (2017–2019) and a visiting fellow at the Center for European Studies at Harvard University (2017). Since 2021, she has served as a member of the Expert Group for the Implementation of the EU Anti-Torture Regulation, where she advises the European Commission on strategies to regulate the trade in goods used for torture and capital punishment.
Contributions
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Publications
Demonstrates that courts, such as the European Court of Human Rights, sometimes employ forbearance or audacity as strategies to navigate politically and avoid backlash. Utilizes 2,300 rulings and expert interviews to real how these strategies shaped and reshaped the legal norm against torture over time.
Explains the way the European Court of Human Rights determines the extraterritorial application of the European Convention of Human Rights and attributes state obligations for human rights violations perpetrated beyond their borders.
Looks at the relation between legal cultures and practices through the lenses of practice theory. In particular, it focuses on public hearings at the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) and explains how legal cultures and ethos shape the way public hearings are organized
Compares the reform processes at the European and the Inter-American Human Rights Systems.
Takes a closer look at the European Court of Human Rights and provides a framework for understanding how court rulings develop norms – that is, how judicial decisions modify norms’ content or scope.
Explores how the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has approached extraterritorially-committed violations of human rights. Traditionally, the ECtHR has been wary of extending the application of the European Convention of Human Rights beyond the territories of European countries. Examines the varyingly strict criteria that the ECtHR devised for ensuring accountability for human rights violations perpetrated beyond the territorial boundaries of European states.
Explains the changes in the understanding of the norm against torture and inhuman or degrading treatment. Traces its evolution, taking the European human rights system as a reference point.
Investigates the procedure's creation through the prism of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. Analyzes its subsequent institutionalization and application in the case law. Illustrates the structural changes generated by the procedure, and examines the reasons undermining the effectiveness of its operation.
Gives an account on how the European Court of Human Rights' jurisprudence has transformed the norm's nature and scope. Analyzes the preparatory works and conducts large-scale content analysis on the relevant case law for the period between 1948 and 2006.