On 9 October 2026, the Section President and judge elected in respect of the Czech Republic, Kateřina Šimáčková, spoke at the opening of the 5th Paul Tavernier Study Day, organised in Montpellier by the Institute of European Human Rights Law.

During her speech, which focused on the theme France and the European Convention on Human Rights, the Section President recalled that France is not only the Court’s host country, a State Party to the Convention, and the birthplace of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen as well as the first modern civil code, but also the country of Simone de Beauvoir, who, in her book The Second Sex, subjected this civil code to feminist critique.

Noting that she chairs the section responsible for adjudicating cases brought against France, she referred to several judgments recently handed down in relation to women’s rights, emphasising that each of them had helped to advance the French legal framework for the benefit of the entire population.

She concluded her remarks by emphasising that the dialogue between the Court’s case-law and legal scholarship is beneficial: “On the one hand, legal scholarship has the role of disseminating and promoting the Convention’s case-law, ensuring the expansion of the Convention’s standards and, at the same time, criticising it and stimulating it in order to improve its coherence and, ultimately, to continue striving for better justice.”