Established as a post-World War II response to conflict and fascism, the European Court of Human Rights is routinely characterized as the most successful human rights institution in the world. Based in Strasbourg, France, its jurisdiction extends to over 700 million people on European soil across the 46 Council of Europe member countries. The Court is the crown jewel of the Council, an international organization dedicated to human rights, democracy, and the rule of law. And yet, for years, European institutions have been haunted by the specter of failure. In the shadow of rising populism, inequality, and war, faith in democracy and the rule of law has been shaken to its core. Drawing on extensive fieldwork conducted over eight years with human rights advocates, lawyers, and judges at the European Court of Human Rights, this book asks: What kind of justice is possible through law?

Drawing on participant observation, in-depth interviews, and archival research, Jessica Greenberg tracks two paradoxical experiences of the European human rights system and the Court: on the one hand, the Court as a bureaucratic "machine;" on the other, the Court as the "conscience of Europe." She argues that human rights frameworks fuel imaginative approaches to social change, and compel legal actors to creatively navigate institutions through advocacy, persuasion, and innovative interpretation of what the law is and what it should be.

About the speaker

Jessica Greenberg is a professor of anthropology at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign. Her first book, After the Revolution: Youth, Democracy, and the Politics of Disappointment in Serbia (Stanford 2014) analyzes the temporal and affective experience of democracy in the shift from popular resistance to political institutionalization. Her new book, Justice in the Balance: Democracy, Rule of Law and the European Court of Human Rights (Stanford 2025) examines the promises and limits of social change through legal institutions.  From 2024-2025, Greenberg served as the Acting Director of the European Union Center at Illinois and is the PI on a Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence grant for 2025-2028 on democracy, rule of law and civic participation. In 2017, Greenberg earned a Masters in Law as a University of Illinois fellow for study in a second discipline. She has served as co-editor of the Political and Legal anthropology review (PoLAR), and is the recipient of multiple grants, including two Fulbright Fellowships, and an NSF in Law and Science. Prior to coming to University of Illinois, she was an Academy Scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies, and an assistant professor at Northwestern, in the Rhetoric and Communication program.