The Centre for Constitutionalism and Human Rights (CHR) was established within the Department of Constitutional Law in 2022. Its primary aim is to contribute to the advancement of scholarly knowledge in the field of human rights and their relationship to other key concepts of modern constitutionalism. The Centre is also founded on the belief that academic research should not be an end in itself, but should instead engage with the pressing challenges faced by contemporary society. Accordingly, the Centre seeks to enhance public, political, and legal discourse through its activities, with the goal of identifying appropriate mechanisms and the scope of protection for the rights of individuals and vulnerable groups.

The founding of the Centre is underpinned by the idea that current legal doctrine should strive to overcome the marked particularism in the field of human rights, which is often reflected in the isolated examination of individual aspects of these rights and the contexts in which they are applied. The Centre thus aims to contribute to the re-establishment of a balance among the three fundamental pillars of modern constitutionalism: human rights, the institutional organisation of public power, and constitutional theory. On one hand, this involves exploring the relationship between the application and realisation of human rights and constitutional theory—that is, between the development of human rights in their specific domains and the theoretical foundations of their existence. On the other hand, it concerns the relationship between “particularised” human rights and the institutional context in which they exist, especially their interaction with judicial and, above all, political discourse.