Legal Protection as Competition for Jurisdiction: The Case of Refugee Protection through Law in the Past and at Present

This article explores the structure of the legal protection of refugees in Europe today. To this end, it will contrast historical arrangements providing protection to refugees, namely church asylum in the late Middle Ages and refuge for religious minorities, with the current European refugee regime, that is the Common European Asylum System (CEAS), in particular the Dublin system. The central claim of this article is that a basic condition for the legal protection of refugees is the existence of multiple jurisdictions, which in turn caters for competition for jurisdiction. The official logic of the CEAS, however, endorses harmonization, unity and the hierarchy of jurisdictions rather than a competition between jurisdictions. This partially explains the difficulties under the CEAS in organizing the protection of refugees through law. In policy terms, this article supports calls for reconsidering the Dublin Regulation, since through the ‘single jurisdiction’ approach Dublin hampers the legal protection of refugees.