ABSTRACT
We have embarked on the investigation of the way basic rights under the German Constitution affect private-law relations of private individuals inter se in the hope of finding structures which we might then be able to detect in the law of the ECHR and to use in its application. As we have seen, we can reconstruct mittelbare Drittwirkung of basic rights as requiring a judge to perform a balancing of competing rights which involves two variables: the ‘dose’ of protection for the right of one private person needed, on the one hand, and the intensity of a restriction on the other private person’s right, the exercise of which negatively affects the first person’s right. Dependent on the urgency and the required degree of protection (or the intensity of the duty to protect, the Schutzpflicht) the principle of proportionality will allow the judge, in solving the controversy between the private parties, to apply the law in a way that, to a higher or lesser degree, invades the second person’s liberty.
5.1.1 The example of Karhuvaara and Iltalehti
