THE ROLE OF THE EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE INSTITUTE OF SINGLE MARRIAGES

This article explores the position of the European Court of Human Rights on same-sex marriage and their role in the establishment and legalization of this institution. The peculiarities of the interpretation of the concept of «right to family life» have been clarified on the basis of consideration of recent decisions on the subject and the historical prerequisite for changing views on the traditional conception of the family, identifying the temporal factor as an important prerequisite for rethinking the concepts. Also, based on the systematization of the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights, a hetero-normative approach to the concept of marriage has been analyzed in the case of the claimants referred to in Article 8 or 12 ECtHR. The author draws attention to the ECHR's repeated reference in its decisions to European consensus theory, namely, by choosing this type of consensusbased analysis, the ECtHR offers States the freedom of assessment to set rules for granting same-sex couples access to marriage. The authors of the article consider that the current (type) consensus-oriented analysis of the European Convention may be problematic for several reasons and may lead to problems such as the detrimental treatment of minorities by the majority in different Member States, giving priority to national or public interests. social groups. The ECtHR thus seeks to strike a balance between, on the one hand, the protection of minorities, such as same-sex couples, and, on the other, maintaining its own authority and that of Member States that may not agree to the promotion of rights and the provision of legal protection to same-sex couples.