On 11 February 2026 at 2:30 PM, the public defence of the doctoral dissertation by Saulius Stonkus (doctoral student of the Department of Public Law) will take place at the Faculty of Law of Vilnius University, in the Kazimieras Leonas Sapiega Auditorium (Room 302).
Title of the dissertation: “Aviation Safety and Security in Relation to Human Rights”
ANNOTATION:
The present thesis investigates in a detailed and complex manner the legal content of aviation safety and aviation security in their relation with human rights. The research focused on various aspects of elaboration of understanding aviation safety and aviation security in an attempt to identify the key elements constituting their content. This was implemented by highlighting linguistic peculiarities of the use of these terms in various languages along with the traditional use of the concepts of safety and security in everyday language as well as in various other fields of activity outside the realm of aviation with the objective to develop integral understanding of these concepts while also striving to perceive the contexts which make the greatest impact on understanding these concepts. Differences between objective and subjective, absolute and relative aviation safety and aviation security concepts were explored. When analysing the concepts of aviation safety and aviation security in international regulation of civil aviation as well as in the jurisprudence of CJEU and ECtHR, this thesis sought to identify practical understanding of the key elements of their content, and to explore them in the context of human rights protection. The thesis provided legal delimitation between the concepts of aviation safety and aviation security and explored their relationship while considering the point that the importance of this separation is essential for evaluation of restrictions of human rights. This doctoral thesis conducted multilateral analysis of aviation safety and aviation security as grounds for restricting human rights, and suggested a background for a model of evaluating their relationship with human rights so that the right balance between competing values could be ensured.
The dissertation was prepared at Vilnius University from 2020 to 2025.
Academic supervisor: Prof. Dr. Skirgailė Žalimienė (Vilnius University)
DEFENCE BOARD:
Chairman – Prof. Habil. Dr. Vytautas Nekrošius (Vilnius University)
Members:
- Assoc. Prof. Dr. Indrė Isokaitė-Valužė (Vilnius University)
- Assoc. Prof. Dr. Vygantė Milašiūtė (Vilnius University)
- Prof. Dr. Haroldas Šinkūnas (Vilnius University)
- Prof. Dr. Jukka Viljanen (Tampere University, Republic of Finland)
Venue: Vilnius University, Faculty of Law, Kazimieras Leonas Sapiega Auditorium (Room 302), Saulėtekio av. 9, Vilnius, Lithuania.
The dissertation is available for review at the Library of Vilnius University and here.
The defence of dissertation can also be viewed remotely through this link.