feast.

It's a bit early, isn't it?

But there are so many early birds.

Very good.

Thank you very much.

My name is Michael Trennerich.

As a professor of political science, I am teaching human rights and human right politics

here at the university.

And I'm also the chairperson of the Nuremberg Human Rights Centre.

I have the honour to moderate our panel on political contestation of human rights and

liberal democracy.

And we have wonderful guests here.

On my right there's Catherine Sicking.

She comes a long way from Cambridge, Massachusetts in the United States.

To us she is the Rhine family professor of human rights policy at the Harvard Kennedy

School of Government and a Carol Potsheimer professor at the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced

Study.

Catherine is a well-known expert on human rights.

All our students know your books, such as Activists Beyond Borders or The Justice Cascade

or more recently Evidence for Hope, Making Human Rights Work in the 21st Century.

In contrast to the widespread pessimism about human rights, she makes the case that human

rights may work and we believe that too.

So we are very glad to have you with us, Catherine.

A warm welcome also to other guest who lives in Berlin but who is coming from Brussels.

Tanja Börtzel is professor of political science and holds the chair for European Integration

at the Otto Suhr Institute of Forepolitical Science at the Freie Universität Berlin.

She is director, among others, of the cluster of excellence contestations of the liberal

script.

She also directs the Chaux Monnais Center of Excellence, Europe and its citizens.

Tanja Börtzel has published very widely, among others, she is co-editor of the Oxford

Handbook of Comparative Regionalism as well as of the Oxford Handbook of Governance and

Areas of Limited Statehood.

We can look forward with great interest to two forthcoming books written together with

Thomas Risse, Governance Under Anarchy as well as the Politics of Non-compliance in

the European Union.

Please welcome our two experts.

Well the meeting is scheduled to finish at half past ten, well perhaps half a little bit

more because we are starting lately, thus we have about 90 minutes for discussion and

I suggest that we first have a discussion here on the panel between our guests.

I have prepared a few questions for that, for you, and in the second half of the session

I would like to open the floor for your questions and comments which are highly appreciated.

So my first set of questions aims to identify the features of political contestations of

human rights and liberal democracy.

So Tanja you are director of an excellent cluster contestation of a liberal script,

perhaps you may explain what you mean by liberal script and for both of you what is the relationship

between liberal democracy and human rights and what are the main features of current

contestations of liberal democracy and or human rights and in how far they are different

from contestations in earlier days.

As we heard yesterday human rights have always been a matter of contestation.

So and who is criticizing the idea of liberal democracy or human rights and why?