The right to respect for private life in line with the principle of personal autonomy in the European Convention on Human Rights' system

When interpreted dynamically in a way that protects many different interests, the right to respect for private life, regulated in Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, has become a reference right, as we use it in the context of this study and an interpretation principle, personal autonomy, has become a decisive instrument in its realization. Personal autonomy, in its simplest form, is based on the idea that a person shall make decisions on his own, without being governed by external conditions imposed on him and also choose and live a life that he considers good. While personal autonomy should not be conceived as an unlimited freedom, it shall ensure an immunity against the interventions that can be made upon the most private and intimate aspects of the individual and if necessary, provide some positive protection by the states. In this direction, the theoretical foundations of personal autonomy and especially its meaning in the tradition of liberal thought are investigated and it is revealed that it is configurated as a fundamental value behind the private life in order to develop a positive understanding of freedom. Thus, when the European Court of Human Rights interprets the right to respect for private life in line with the principle of personal autonomy with the means of a dynamic interpretation method, it has started to develop a positive understanding of freedom. This new understanding expands the scope of rights, accepted to be fixed by positive law and therefore, includes many different legal interests within the scope of protection. It even ensures that the preferences of the individual regarding the use of rights be determinant. Some results and limitations emerge from the evaluation of how the dynamic interpretation transforms the right to respect for private life in line with that principle. Accordingly, three decision groups related to the right to respect for private life (assisted suicide, access to abortion and intervention to hunger strike) has been specified and focused upon in order to show the limitations of dynamic interpretation.