Başak Çalı

Başak Çalı is professor of international law and head of research at the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights. Previously, she was professor of international law and founding director of the  Centre for Fundamental Rights at the Hertie School, Berlin. She holds a permanent visiting professorship from the I-Courts Centre for Excellence at the University of Copenhagen and is a fellow the University of Essex Human Rights Centre and the Hertie School. She has held visiting professorships in Ankara, Oslo, Paris, and Natolin and serves on the board of a number of journals.

Her expertise concerns international law and human rights. She has published widely in the fields of authority of international law, standards of review in international law, the relationship between international law and domestic law, European human rights law, UN human rights law and comparative international human rights law. She has pioneered the study of bad faith violations of human rights law (Wisconsin International Law Journal, 2018), and is the author of 'Authority of International Law: Obedience, Respect and Rebuttal' (OUP 2015), editor of International Law for International Relations (OUP, 2010), co- editor of Legalisation of Human Rights: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Human Rights and Human Rights Law (Routledge 2006), Migration and the European Convention on Human Rights (OUP, 2021) and Secondary Rules of Primary Importance: Standards of Review, Causality, Evidence and Attribution before International Courts and Tribunals (OUP, 2022). Her forthcoming co-authored manuscript Leading Cases in UN Human Rights Law will be published by OUP in 2026.

She is the principle investigator of ‘Deep Impact through Soft Jurisprudence? The Contribution of United Nations Treaty Body Case Law to the Development of International Human Rights Law’ (German Science Council 2023-2026), and principle investigator of the 7-year German Science Council-funded cluster of excellence  ‘Transforming Human Rights’ based at the FAU Research Center for Human Rights Erlangen-Nürnberg. She has been the principal investigator of research grants funded by the Volkswagen Foundation, the Economic and Social Research Council and the British Academy, amongst others.

As a legal practitioner, Başak has acted as an expert on the European Convention on Human Rights since 2002 and has trained judges, prosecutors, lawyers and police officers in the implementation of the European Convention on Human Rights across the Council of Europe. She has acted as a legal representative or advisor in several cases before the European Court of Human Rights. She is the co-founder and former chair of the European Implementation Network, Europe’s leading civil society organization that advocates for the full and effective implementation of human rights judgments.