By Thomas Burri

Francesca Ippolito/Sara Iglesias Sánchez (eds.), Protecting Vulnerable Groups – The European Human Rights Framework, Hart Publishing 2015

Hector Salamanca was vulnerable. The Mexican was old and, after having suffered a stroke, tied to the wheel chair. He had no means of communication save a tiny bell he barely managed to ring. After most of his family was dead, he lived the life of a lonesome vegetable in a nursing home.

Donald Gately is vulnerable. His sense of honour and duty as a staffer at Enfield House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House had practically compelled him to defend a drug addict who had got involved in a fight. In the fight, Don G. was shot in the shoulder. Now, he is tied to the hospital bed, suffering from inhuman pain, pain from which only opioids could bring relief – though not for him, for opioids had been the focus of his long history of substance abuse and now he is desperately abstinent.

Protecting Vulnerable Groups is a great book. It made me see all of the above (and more) in a new light. To be sure, Protecting Vulnerable Groups is not a book about Breaking Bad or Infinite Jest. It is not an economic, sociological, or socialist book either, despite the appearance the title creates. No, Protecting Vulnerable Groups is a rock solid book on the law, in particular case law. It explains how the European Court of Human Rights and the European Court of Justice attend to the vulnerable. Sometimes, the courts explicitly find persons vulnerable, as in MSS v Belgium and Greece when an asylum-seeker was declared “particularly vulnerable” (Protecting Vulnerable Groups, p. 249); sometimes the idea of vulnerability is merely inherent in the courts’ case law. Both occurrences are discussed extensively in the book. Continue reading →