Prof. Mireille Hildebrandt will deliver a talk on ‘Why a risk to a right is not about harm but about violation’ at the Annual Conference of the European Academy of Law (ERA), on 21 March in Brussels (see the Conference Programme here).
In this talk Hildebrandt will explain why the concept of a risk to a fundamental right should be seen as a risk to the violation of the right, for which harm is not a condition. She will compare this - precautionary approach - to the role played by harm in tort law and in utilitarian approaches to law, as exemplified by the regulatory theory that pervades Anglo-American approaches to law. See also her exposition at the ‘Beyond Data Protection’ Conference in September last year, including the slides.