mr. VG Willems, MA

**Title of PhD project: Linguistic Politeness in Judicial Deliberations of the European Court of Human Rights: The ECtHR's Judiciary and Its Audiences** **Supervisors: Prof.mr.dr. A.M.P. Gaakeer and Prof.dr. E. Mak (Utrecht University)** Vera studies the question how judges treat their audiences in their judgments and decisions, in particular the parties to a legal dispute, given the oppositional and, what she would call, 'conflictual' nature of their decision-making. She does so on the basis of a case study of several written proceedings of the European Court of Human Rights on cases involving alleged violations of the freedom of religion. In order to better understand judges' communication strategies, she incorporates insights from linguistic politeness theory and position her findings within a rule of law context, addressing, in particular, the issue of the legitimacy of judicial decision-making.