The Right to Honour and Reputation as a Human Right for the Mind

In some cases featuring the right to the protection of reputation under Article 8 ECHR, the ECtHR refers to the protection of honour alongside reputation. While there is existing scholarship on reputation under Article 8, honour is less well understood. This chapter seeks to ascertain the meaning of honour in the ECtHR’s jurisprudence. Piecing together evidence from civilian and common law doctrine and scholarship as well as key ECtHR decisions, the chapter argues that a better label for the right to the protection of reputation under Article 8 would be a ‘right to honour and reputation’. Though there are conceptual difficulties in drawing a sharp distinction between honour and reputation, the former can be understood as inward-looking, related to self-respect (or consciousness of one’s own dignity), whereas the latter is outward-looking, concerning one’s social standing in the community. Because the right to honour and reputation has an important internal aspect that seeks to safeguard one’s sense of self-respect or to restore it in the case of substantial loss, the chapter argues that the right to honour and reputation can be regarded as a human right for the mind.