The European Court of Human Rights:

Achievements and Prospects

Philip Leach

Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Mandate and Functioning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Assessing the European Court’s Achievements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
State Participation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
The Court’s Jurisprudence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Human Rights in Conflict and Post-Conflict Situations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Practice and Procedure: An Accessible System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Redress and Systemic Violations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
The Election of Judges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Impact: The Implementation of Judgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
The Future Potential and the Challenges Ahead . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Abstract
This chapter discusses and analyses the origins, workings, and future prospects of
the most significant human rights mechanism that Europe has seen – the Euro-
pean Court of Human Rights. Created by European governments in the immedi-
ate aftermath of the atrocities experienced during World War II, over the ensuing
decades, the Court has laid down a remarkably comprehensive set of standards for
states in upholding core civil and political rights, notably the right to a fair trial,
the prohibition of torture, and the right to freedom of expression. As state
accession to the Council of Europe increased following the breakup of the former
Yugoslavia and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Court has been faced with
increasing numbers of large-scale systemic cases which have necessitated

P. Leach (*)
Professor of Human Rights Law; Director, European Human Rights Advocacy Centre (EHRAC),
Middlesex University, London, UK
e-mail: p.leach@mdx.ac.uk

# Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd 2018 1

G. Oberleitner (ed.), International Human Rights Institutions, Tribunals, and Courts,
International Human Rights, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-4516-5_16-1
2 P. Leach

changes in its practice and procedure and a more creative, incisive approach to
providing redress. The Court has succeeded in setting credible standards for the
continent (and beyond) but has been weighed down with a huge back load of
cases for several decades. Within a regional polity that has become less receptive
and indeed increasingly hostile, toward the very concept of human rights, the
future challenges for the Court are to maintain its independence, its legitimacy,
and its potency as a safety net for victims of human rights violations across the
continent.

Keywords
European Court of Human Rights · Council of Europe · European Convention on
Human Rights · Jurisprudence · Redress · Implementation

Introduction

Across the continent of Europe, it is the European Court of Human Rights (the
European Court) and its application of the European Convention on Human Rights
(the European Convention or ECHR), which have undoubtedly had the most signif-
icant impact in upholding human rights standards and principles. The European
Convention was drafted in the immediate aftermath of the World War II, in response
to grave and widespread human rights atrocities. Its development and that of the
Court reflected an aspiration for greater European unity and enhanced democracy
and the need to establish an early warning system to prevent a descent into totali-
tarianism ever happening on the continent again. The Convention and Court were the
creations of the Council of Europe, an interstate body established in 1949 to promote
peace and solidarity in Europe (an organization that is entirely separate from the
European Union).

Mandate and Functioning

The European Convention represented, for Europe, a significant step in the enforce-
ment of particular aspects of the 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of
Human Rights. It was primarily intended to protect civil and political rights rather
than economic, social, or cultural rights. It established a right of individual petition –
the right of individuals (and organizations) to challenge their governments by taking
cases to the European Commission of Human Rights (established in 1954) and then
to the European Court (established in 1959). To permit such a right of individual
petition was at the time of the creation of the Convention system a revolutionary
development, given the strength of notions of the independent sovereignty of the
state. In other ways, however, the process involved undeniably political aspects: the
system was to be supervised by a political body, the Committee of Ministers; the
European Commission initially had a majority of serving or former ministers and
The European Court of Human Rights: Achievements and Prospects 3

civil servants or MPs rather than legal professionals; and the procedure before the
Commission was kept confidential. This two-tier system (embodying both a Com-
mission and Court) is mirrored by the regional human rights mechanisms in the
Americas and Africa, but in Europe the first tier (the European Commission on
Human Rights) was abolished in 1998, a step which was primarily taken in order to
speed up the litigation process, as these bodies became inundated with many
thousands of cases.
The European Convention on Human Rights was adopted in 1950; it embodies a
series of civil and political rights, the core of which are reflected in other comparable
international and regional human rights standards established in the second half of
the twentieth century. Its rights include the right to life; freedom from torture;
freedom from slavery and forced labour; the right to liberty of the person; the right
to a fair trial; the right to privacy; the rights to freedom of thought, conscience and
religion, freedom of expression, and peaceful assembly and association; the right to
marry; and the prohibition of discrimination. These Convention rights have not been
amended, but they have been supplemented, between 1952 and 2002, by additional
protocols to the Convention covering rights including the following: the protection
of property, right to education, and right to free elections (Protocol No. 1), the right
to freedom of movement and the prohibition of expulsion of nationals and the
collective expulsion of aliens (Protocol No. 4), the abolition of the death penalty
both at times of war and of peace (Protocols No. 6 and No. 13), and the right not to be
tried or punished twice (Protocol No. 7).
The Court sits in a single-judge formation, in committees of three judges, in
chambers of seven judges, or in a Grand Chamber of 17 judges. It also comprises a
court registry of more than 640 lawyers and other staff. Its two official languages are
English and French – although in practice litigating parties are frequently permitted
to use national languages in their written or oral pleadings. All cases must pass the
Court’s admissibility criteria, the most important of which in practice are the
requirement first to exhaust any available and effective domestic remedies and
then to introduce an application at the Court strictly within a period of 6 months
after the final domestic decision in the case was taken. The vast majority of cases are
dealt with purely by way of written pleadings. It will hold a hearing in some cases –
such hearings involve legal argument only and take up less than 3 hours (they are
webcast by the Court on the same day). Very exceptionally, the Court may hold a
separate fact-finding hearing (in-country or in Strasbourg).
The most significant cases are decided by the Grand Chamber – either such cases
are routed directly to the Grand Chamber or once a chamber has issued a judgment,
any of the parties involved can request its referral to the Grand Chamber. This is not a
right of appeal, as only a small number of such requests are accepted – those raising
the most important issues. Judges may append separate opinions to the judgments,
either concurring with or dissenting from the majority stance – a facet of the system
which has provided a rich source of “alternative views”, some of which then form the
basis of the majority view in later decisions.
Exceptionally, states are permitted to opt out of (“derogate” from) certain aspects
of the Convention where there is a “public emergency threatening the life of the
4 P. Leach

nation” (Article 15) – this right of derogation was considered in the Court’s very first
judgment, Lawless v Ireland in 1961, concerning powers of detention without trial in
the late 1950s. The UK government used this provision in order to be able to detain
terrorist suspects for extended periods without charge in Northern Ireland in the
1980s, but when it invoked Article 15 again after the terrorist attacks on the United
States in 2001, in order to detain foreign nationals who were suspected of involve-
ment in international terrorism, the measure was struck down by the Court because it
discriminated unjustifiably between national and non-nationals (A and others v
United Kingdom 2009). There have been a spate of recent derogations, which are
yet to be tested before the Court: Ukraine derogated in 2015 as a result of the conflict
in eastern Ukraine; France did so in the same year after the terrorist attacks in Paris;
and Turkey declared a state of emergency and issued a notice of derogation follow-
ing the attempted coup in July 2016.

Assessing the European Court’s Achievements

There can be little doubt that it is the European Convention on Human Rights which
has exerted the most influence on the development of legislation and policy in the
human rights field throughout Europe; one former President of the European Court,
Rolv Ryssdal, described it as “the basic law of Europe.” It has sought not to
harmonize laws but rather to set out common standards for the continent – to
prescribe a level in the areas it covers below which states should not fall. Indeed,
the Convention is considered to represent one of the most successful human rights
systems in the world. The Strasbourg Court’s effectiveness has been grounded on the
high level of state take-up, the periodic addition of new substantive rights, the
incorporation of the Convention into domestic law by the Council of Europe states,
the depth of the Court’s case law in particular areas, and the extent to which its
judgments have led to changes in domestic laws and practice (PACE 2016). Beyond
Europe, the Court has established itself as a key pillar in the universal system of
human rights protection, its decisions being continually cited by international,
regional, and national courts.
Arguably pivotal to the Court’s influence was its development in the early years
of the foundational principles as to how human rights standards should be appropri-
ately applied in a democratic order – above all the concepts of legality and propor-
tionality which were laid out initially in seminal cases such as Handyside v United
Kingdom (concerning the banning of a book for schoolchildren on sex education, on
grounds of obscenity) and Sunday Times v United Kingdom (concerning an injunc-
tion issued to prevent the Sunday Times newspaper from publishing an article about
the litigation relating to children affected by the drug thalidomide). These are
fundamental principles which have subsequently become embedded in the national
laws (and indeed legal cultures) of most Council of Europe states. The Court’s
scrutiny of the proportionality of state interferences into the “qualified” Convention
rights (such as respect for private life, freedom of expression, and freedom of
religion) is, however, subject to the notion of subsidiarity – that the Court’s
The European Court of Human Rights: Achievements and Prospects 5

supervisory role is subsidiary to that played by national bodies (governments,

parliaments, and courts) which should take the lead in upholding human rights
standards at the national level. Furthermore, in assessing the proportionality of an
interference with a Convention right, the Court established its “margin of appreci-
ation” doctrine that national bodies are in principle in a better position than the
European Court to judge the necessity of restrictions on rights. This has allowed for a
limited extent of variation in national standards, arguably without unacceptably
lowering Convention standards to accommodate “national or local differences,”
which are sometimes cited by states (globally) in order to try to avoid liability for
transgressing human rights. These qualifications of the Court’s role and powers have
been critical to its widespread acceptance by domestic legal jurisdictions across the
European continent. They have led to an unprecedented level of acceptance of the
Court by states – which is remarkable in view of the need to overlay these European
standards across 47 domestic legal systems (based on common law or civil law or the
legal systems established in the former socialist/communist states of central and
eastern Europe) embodying their own diverse legal cultures, traditions and practices.
It is also no mean feat given that the granting of the right of individual petition (the
direct right of individuals to challenge states at the Court) was such a novel
development in public international law.

State Participation

Since ten states came together in 1949 to adopt the Statute of the Council of Europe
and then ratify the European Convention on Human Rights in the early 1950s,
accession has increased the number of state parties almost fivefold, including, in
the 1990s, many of the states which had formerly been part of the Soviet Union.
With membership at 47 since 2006, just Belarus remains out in the cold. Although
the admission of certain states into the Council of Europe at particular junctures has
been criticized (notably as regards Russia in the late 1990s at a time when it was
embroiled in the second conflict in Chechnya), the fact that virtually all European
states have proved willing to join it and accordingly to be subject to the resulting
obligations – at least in principle, if not always in practice – is itself significant and
lends the organization further credibility and gravitas in the pursuit of achieving
common minimum standards applicable across the continent.
It should be acknowledged that the significant increase in state accession to the
Convention, especially since the 1990s, has meant an evolution in the Court’s role. It
continues to perform the vital function of enhancing standards of rights protection as
regards states where compliance with the Convention is relatively strong, but it has
also increasingly been required to adjudicate on cases of egregious human rights
violations and on large numbers of systemic or widespread violations (both of which
are discussed further below), which in the main (although not exclusively) concern
newer member states from central and eastern Europe.
It is notable, however, that the high level of state accession has not led to a
concomitant rise in the use of the interstate application process, which allows
6 P. Leach

member states to challenge other states at the European Court. There is no need for
applicant states to have a direct “interest” in a particular case in the sense that one or
more of its citizens need to have been victims of Convention violations, and
therefore this procedure could enable the Council of Europe states to provide a
wider policing or monitoring role. For example, states could have challenged the
systematic abuses committed over many years by the Russian security forces in the
north Caucasus region. Aside from a challenge launched by Denmark, Norway,
Sweden, and the Netherlands to the abuses committed by the Greek military junta in
the late 1960s, the interstate process has not been used in this way. Only 20 such
cases have ever been instigated, and most have been brought by states with a direct
interest in the matter at hand: Cyprus challenging Turkey as a consequence of its
occupation of northern Cyprus since the mid-1970s, Georgia litigating against
Russia following the 2008 armed conflict in South Ossetia, and Ukraine bringing
several cases against Russia in 2014 due to the occupation of Crimea and conflict in
eastern Ukraine. A case brought by Ireland against the United Kingdom led to a
Court judgment in 1978, holding that the interrogation techniques employed by the
British Army in Northern Ireland constituted inhuman and degrading treatment
(in violation of Article 3 of the Convention) but that they did not amount to torture.
This decision was challenged afresh by the Irish Government in 2014 when new
evidence was unearthed at the national archives in Kew – but the request for revision
was rejected by the Court in 2018 on the basis that the new evidence would not have
had a decisive effect on the original judgment.

The Court’s Jurisprudence

There are a number of areas of particular strength and depth in the Court’s jurispru-
dence, which have been developed over decades. As the oldest of the regional human
rights courts, it is perhaps unsurprising that the weight and extent of its case law in
distinct areas have enabled the Court to engage in gradations and nuances of its case
law, the equivalent of which cannot be found elsewhere. One such area is the field of
criminal justice – reflecting the fact that the majority of decided cases have
concerned Article 5 (the right to liberty and security of the person) and 6 (the right
to a fair trial) of the Convention. The Court has been required to elucidate how
principles such as the right of access to court, the privilege against self-
incrimination, the equality of arms, and the right to an independent and impartial
tribunal should be applied in numerous situations which have arisen across 47 Euro-
pean states. It has clarified the “overall fairness” test (under Article 6), including
where there is evidence that criminal proceedings were manifestly arbitrary, and it
has refined its approach as to the fairness in criminal proceedings of admitting
statements by absent witnesses. Its case law has been refined in relation to the
right of access to a lawyer for suspects held in police custody, to detention on
grounds of mental health, to the need to conduct reviews into the detention of life
sentence prisoners, and as regards prison conditions (and the treatment of people
with disabilities in detention). In recent years, the Court has had to adjudicate on a
The European Court of Human Rights: Achievements and Prospects 7

number of high-profile cases of “political prosecutions” – where prosecuting author-

ities have found to have unjustifiably targeted opposition politicians (Merabishvili v
Georgia 2017) or human rights activists (Rasul Jafarov v Azerbaijan 2016) – leading
to violations of Article 5 together with Article 18.
The Court has applied a rigorous and searching scrutiny of cases in which state
agents have used lethal force – which is only permitted where it can be shown to
have been “absolutely necessary.” Another area of focus has concerned the duty on
the state to carry out effective investigations into fatal incidents, which was devel-
oped in particular in the case law relating to the actions of the British security forces
in Northern Ireland and subsequently the cases in the 1990s concerning Convention
violations committed by the security forces in south-east Turkey (from the Kurdish
regions) and by the Russian security forces in Chechnya (in the 2000s).
In spite of mounting international political pressure resulting in particular from
international terrorism, the Court has held firm in maintaining the absolute prohibi-
tion on torture (Article 3), even in the face of direct challenges from states such as
Italy and the United Kingdom (Saadi v Italy 2008). The Court has also upheld the
absolute nature of Article 3 in the context of the “migration crisis.” In M.S.S. v
Belgium and Greece (2011), the applicant claimed asylum in Greece and complained
that the conditions in which he was detained at Athens airport were inhuman and
degrading. The Court acknowledged the pressures on states created by increasing
numbers of migrants and asylum-seekers (which was exacerbated by the transfers of
asylum-seekers by other member states under the Dublin Regulation) but found that
this could not absolve Greece from its Article 3 obligations. Furthermore, the Court
has maintained the principle that although the EU’s Dublin asylum system may
allow one Council of Europe state to transfer an asylum-seeker to another Council of
Europe state, the transferring state must still make sure that the intermediary
country’s asylum procedure affords sufficient guarantees to ensure that Article
3 will not be violated. On that basis Belgium was also held to have breached Article
3 by transferring the applicant to Greece, because of its deemed knowledge of how
poorly asylum-seekers were being treated there. In the same decision, the Grand
Chamber additionally found that extreme material poverty may breach Article 3 – in
this case, because the applicant asylum-seeker was homeless in Greece and was
unable to cater for his most basic needs: food, hygiene, and a place to live.
In the Abu Qatada judgment (Othman v United Kingdom 2012), the Court for the
first time held that an applicant’s deportation (from the United Kingdom to Jordan)
would violate the right to a fair hearing and amount to a “flagrant denial of justice,”
because of the real risk of the admission at his Jordanian trial of evidence obtained by
torturing witnesses. However, in the same decision, the Court also concluded that
there would be no violation of Article 3 on the basis that assurances made by the
Jordanian government in a memorandum of understanding (backed up by indepen-
dent monitoring) removed any real risk of ill-treatment. A series of landmark
judgments (such as El-Masri v former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia 2012)
exposed the practice of “extraordinary rendition” – with states including Macedonia,
Italy, and Poland being found responsible for the torture and secret transfer of
terrorist suspects into US custody, when they were then severely ill-treated by the
8 P. Leach

CIA, and some transferred to the US naval base at Guantánamo Bay. Causing no
little controversy in 2015, the Grand Chamber decided that Article 3 had been
violated when a Belgian police officer slapped a 17-year old once in the face (Bouyid
v Belgium 2015).
The Court has also proved resolute in seeking to uphold fundamental democratic
principles in a myriad of circumstances, for example, taking a stand over the
dissolution of political parties (especially prevalent in Turkey), election irregulari-
ties, restrictions imposed on minority rights associations, and the banning of marches
or demonstrations. What is more, the Court has repeatedly emphasized the central
importance of freedom of speech (particularly political speech) in democratic soci-
eties, including statements that may be offensive, shocking, or disturbing to some. It
has upheld the right of the media and civil society to scrutinize and criticize political
leaders, bolstered pluralistic and independent public broadcasting services, sought to
protect the confidentiality of journalistic sources, and closely probed instances of
prior restraint of the media and the application of heavy-handed defamation laws.
The Court has fought against the unjustifiable severity of sanctions imposed on
journalists (especially imprisonment) and has found against states for failing to
provide adequate protection of journalists under threat. The European Convention
does not, however, provide absolute protection to free speech – accordingly, steps
taken by national authorities in response to the incitement of racial hatred, hate
speech, and the glorification of violence have been upheld.
State surveillance techniques have repeatedly been raised before the Court, its
findings in the 1980s leading to legislative control of phone tapping by the police in
the United Kingdom (Malone v United Kingdom 1984), and in 2015 the Grand
Chamber found the legal framework governing secret surveillance of mobile tele-
phone communications by the security services in Russia to be wholly inadequate
(Roman Zakharov v Russia 2015).
In this necessarily brief and selective overview of the Court’s case law, it is
important to recognize that the Court’s more recent decisions have highlighted
discrimination on the basis of gender, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, and
disability (including discrimination against people with HIV). There have been
decisions concerning the failure to give legal recognition to same-sex partnerships,
restrictions on the right to freedom of religion in the workplace, the right of
conscientious objection to military service, the balancing of rights under Articles
8 (respect for private and family life) and 10 (freedom of expression), and cases
upholding freedom of expression via the Internet. Additionally, there is jurispru-
dence on the right to receive information, the right to demonstrate peacefully and for
political purposes, trade union rights, and the duty to contain violent, homophobic
counter-demonstrators. Other cases have addressed restrictions on in vitro fertiliza-
tion and surrogacy, the spate of “missing babies” in Serbia, the treatment of migrants
traveling by sea (including collective expulsions), and structural deficiencies in
asylum procedures.
There are, inevitably, a number of substantive areas where the Court’s jurispru-
dence has been the subject of forceful criticism. Such critiques have concerned, for
example, its disregard for the rights of minorities, its cautious interpretation of the
The European Court of Human Rights: Achievements and Prospects 9

prohibition of discrimination, its approach to the right to freedom of religion

(notably in relation to Islam), its inconsistency as to the parameters of extraterritorial
jurisdiction (where a state acts beyond its boundaries), and the application of the
Court’s “margin of appreciation” doctrine. The Court is sometimes taken to task for
the lack of clarity of its reasoning or the inconsistencies in its case law as between
different sections of the Court. Another area of criticism from applicants and their
advisers has been the relatively low levels of damages awards issued by the Court
and the lack of specificity in its case law to explain how such awards are calculated.
The substantive limitations of the European Convention certainly need to be
acknowledged. As a treaty concerned only with civil and political rights, it lacks
even the limited range of socioeconomic rights that were written into the equivalent
treaties in the Inter-American and African systems. Nor does it incorporate third-
generation rights or the broader range of civil and political rights that have been
reflected in later human rights treaties, such as children’s rights. These (important)
limitations aside, there are two principles of interpretation which, above all else,
have been applied by the Court in a progressive way to ensure that the Convention
and its case law have not become outdated or irrelevant. The first is the teleological
notion that the Convention represents a “living instrument.” Thus its standards must
be assessed through conceptions that are of the present day – not historical. In this
way the Convention continues to evolve and enables the Court to take account of, for
example, changes in societal attitudes and perceptions of scientific and technological
developments and indeed refinements in related fields of international law. This
evolutive approach to the law is an essential feature of an international human rights
court and arguably indeed of any domestic court (Hale 2011).
The second interpretative principle is the notion of “positive obligations” –
including those which are not explicitly referred to in the Convention itself but
which have been implied by the Court through its case law. For example, by
applying an expansive interpretation of the right to life and of physical integrity
and of the prohibition of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment, the Court has
considerably strengthened the protection of some of the most vulnerable people on
the continent. Grounded on the positive obligations to prevent and protect, the Court
has upheld complaints that national authorities have failed to take adequate steps to
protect individuals against foreseeable threats by others, including victims of domes-
tic violence and trafficking. The Court has also highlighted legislative deficiencies
which have led to the inadequate protection of victims of rape and domestic
servitude. As a result, the “horizontal effect” of the Court’s jurisprudence has had
a profound impact in upholding the rights of victims of human rights violations
committed by other individuals (or organizations).
For some politicians and commentators, the European Court’s expansive and
evolutive approach means it has strayed into the realm of judicial lawmaking –
indeed the Court is periodically criticized (as are all international human rights
bodies) by those who perceive unjustifiable incursions into state sovereignty. One
particular target has been the breadth of the Court’s application of Article 8 – the
right to respect for private and family life, home, and correspondence. However, as
noted above, one of the Court’s central jurisprudential principles in interpreting
10 P. Leach

Convention rights is to allow states a discretion (the “margin of appreciation”), the

breadth of which is variable, depending on the particular context. Thus, where a
particularly important facet of an individual’s existence or identity is at stake, the
margin allowed to the state will be more restricted, but where cases are considered to
raise sensitive moral or ethical issues, the margin will be wider.

Human Rights in Conflict and Post-Conflict Situations

The European Court has been required to adjudicate on egregious violations of the
Convention in the context of situations of armed conflict, notably by the security
forces in south-east Turkey in the 1990s and the Russian armed forces in Chechnya
in the 2000s. In respect of both of these regions and also in relation to northern
Cyprus, the Court has tackled the phenomenon of enforced disappearances, building
on the earlier case law of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. In these
regions of conflict, the Court has played a very important role in casting a spotlight
on the nature and extent of human rights violations, often in the absence of effective
prevention or monitoring work by other regional or international human rights
mechanisms. There are, however, real limitations in the Court’s oversight. It would
be right to acknowledge, for example, that there has been a remarkably high rate of
findings of substantive violations of the right to life in the Chechen cases (in other
words, that state agents were found to be directly responsible). However, in many of
the disappearance cases, the Court’s processes have not enabled the victim’s relatives
to find out, for example, whether in fact the victim has died (rather than being
presumed dead) or how, when, or where they died or which identifiable state agency
or agents were responsible (Leach 2008).
Elsewhere, the Court has had selective success in securing the release of individ-
uals unlawfully detained by separatist groups in Georgia and Moldova. Moreover, the
Court has confirmed that the extraterritorial jurisdiction of the Convention does extend
to human rights violations perpetrated by member states’ armed forces acting beyond
the boundaries of the Council of Europe, such as the operations of the British army in
Iraq. There have been important developments in the case law concerning detention
during occupation or armed conflict, involving the application of international human-
itarian law concurrently with international human rights law (Hassan v United
Kingdom 2014). Victims of conflict who have been displaced from their homes and
land over many years have successfully sought acknowledgment of their lost property
rights, such as those affected by the Nagorno-Karabakh armed conflict between
Armenia and Azerbaijan (Chiragov v Armenia 2015; Sargsyan v Azerbaijan 2015).

Practice and Procedure: An Accessible System

One of the notable features of the European Court system is its relative accessibility.
Some have argued that this is a weakness, as it means that vast numbers of cases are
submitted which have caused an enduring backlog of several tens of thousands of
The European Court of Human Rights: Achievements and Prospects 11

cases, rising to a height of 160,000 pending cases in 2011. However, it is the Court’s
role in genuinely providing access to justice to individual applicants who have been
let down in some way by their national authorities, which should remain a preem-
inent factor in influencing how the Court functions. In the twenty-first century,
Europe continues to produce applicants to the Court who are illiterate; who have
been institutionalized (for example, in prisons, psychiatric hospitals, or children’s
“care homes”); who are profoundly vulnerable having been the victims of traffick-
ing, domestic violence, or armed conflict; or who suffer debilitating discrimination
on a daily basis as members of minority groups. In some regions, fundamental
human rights are systematically violated by state security forces, with approval at
the highest political levels. Those who are the victims of such abuses need no further
impediments to the struggle to achieve some measure of access to justice – this is
vital to the Strasbourg process.
It is still the case that there is no court fee at all and that applicants can initiate
cases at the European Court themselves, without necessarily engaging a lawyer. The
fact that, in practice, applicants will not have legal costs awarded against them, even
if their cases are unsuccessful, is also a critical aspect of the Court’s accessibility.
Furthermore, legal aid is available to applicants – in practice this provides only a
limited contribution toward the actual costs likely to be incurred, but it will cover the
costs of attending a hearing at the Court. In 2010 an additional admissibility criterion
was introduced, with the aim of stemming the flow of de minimis cases, by ruling out
cases in which applicants had not suffered a “significant disadvantage.” This devel-
opment raised concerns that cases could be unreasonably blocked on the basis of this
vague criterion: however, in practice, the Court has applied this new test reasonably,
acknowledging that important matters of principle may be raised by cases which have
less serious consequences for the applicant’s personal situation. In order to tighten up
the Court’s application procedure, in 2014, the Court for the first time required all
applicants to lodge their initial petitions using a prescribed form available online. As
the Court’s practice has been to scrutinize such forms very closely – and to reject
applications which are not correctly completed throughout – this meant that initially,
nearly a quarter of new applications were dismissed by the Court for a failure to
comply with these formal criteria. However, such teething problems have leveled off,
and the Court has explicitly accepted that not every applicant will be in a position to
get access to the form – including prisoners and applicants from regions of ongoing
conflict (such as eastern Ukraine) where there is disruption of public services. The
Court’s increasing use of electronic filing (for applicants as well as governments) is
also to be welcomed as making communications quicker and simpler.
In 2010 the Court for the first time formalized a priority policy, so that urgent
cases can be fast-tracked, giving precedence in particular to cases involving a risk to
the applicant’s life or health, cases concerning the deprivation of liberty and those in
which the well-being of a child is at risk. In very urgent cases, the Court may act
speedily (sometimes in a matter of hours) to direct a state to take particular steps to
protect an applicant in a pending case (the “interim measures” procedure). This has
most commonly been applied where an applicant faces the risk of ill-treatment or
death because of their expulsion to another state, in which case the Court will step in
12 P. Leach

to order the state not to expel the person in question while the case is pending before
the Court – which it did in its first such decision, in the case of Soering v United
Kingdom (1989), to prevent the applicant’s extradition to the United States on a
charge carrying the death penalty. This urgent mechanism (which is legally binding)
has also been applied in a range of other situations, especially to direct the authorities
to ensure that sick prisoners receive the requisite medical treatment but also to direct
state authorities to obtain relevant evidence (Diri v Turkey 2007), to ensure the
safety of litigants and family members (R.R. v Hungary 2012), to prevent housing
evictions (Yordanova v Bulgaria 2012), to preserve embryos (Evans v United
Kingdom 2007), and even to protect the plurality of the media (Rustavi 2 v Georgia
2017).
The Court’s “victim status” requirement means that applicants must be able to
show that they themselves have been victims of the breach of the Convention which
they are raising – preventing, for example, NGOs from bringing “representative”
cases on behalf of applicants, as is possible in the African system. However, very
exceptionally, the Court will allow an NGO to stand in the place of an applicant, as it
did in the case of C^ampeanu v Romania (2014), permitting the Centre for Legal
Resources to bring an application against Romania on behalf of an 18-year-old
mentally disabled, HIV-positive Roma man who had died in an orphanage. The
Court will also admit cases brought by potential victims, such as people who are at
risk of being prosecuted under legislation criminalizing homosexual acts (Dudgeon
v United Kingdom 1981) or journalists who may be the subject of the untrammeled
powers of the state security forces to intercept communications (Roman Zakharov v
Russia 2015). Furthermore, the Court has recently started to group cases together
which are factually unrelated but which raise similar legal questions, in order to lay
down broadly applicable standards (Lashmankin v Russia 2017). It has not, how-
ever, gone as far as permitting wider, class actions and abolishing the requirement of
victim status, as some commentators have advocated.
Another area of distinction of the Strasbourg Court is its relatively progressive
approach to obtaining and considering evidence. Evidential problems inevitably
arise in the context of the work of an international court with a remit covering
47 states and have resulted in the Court itself dispatching its judges to hear witnesses
in order to establish the facts, in reversing the burden of proof in relation to
ill-treatment and deaths in custody and in the Court drawing inferences from a
respondent state’s failure to disclose key domestic documents. The high point of
the Court’s practice of holding fact-finding hearings was a period in the 1990s when
panels of judges regularly held witness hearings in Turkey – in cases brought by the
Kurdish minority concerning Convention violations committed by the Turkish
security forces (including enforced disappearances, extrajudicial executions, the
torture of detainees, and village destruction cases) (Leach et al. 2009). This was
considered necessary because there was, in practice, no domestic court fact-finding
process. When, however, comparable cases in Chechnya began to surface in the
early 2000s, the Court declined to carry out a similar fact-finding role.
The litigation process is also accessible to third-party intervenors, which has
enabled civil society organizations to have a discernible impact on the development
The European Court of Human Rights: Achievements and Prospects 13

of the Court’s jurisprudence in certain areas – such as the NGO Interights’ interven-
tion in Opuz v Turkey (2009), the groundbreaking case laying down obligations as to
the prevention and investigation of cases of domestic violence (applicable in respect
of the police, prosecutors and the courts, and as regards legislation). Governments
will also take up this opportunity from time to time – for example, ten states
intervened in Lautsi v Italy (2011), a case challenging the practice of displaying
crucifixes in classrooms in Italian state schools (which was upheld by the Grand
Chamber). Reflecting the increasing pressures on human rights defenders in various
European states (notably Azerbaijan and Russia), the Council of Europe’s former
Commissioner for Human Rights, Nils Muižnieks, developed a practice since 2015
of submitting third-party interventions to the Court setting out how international
standards should be applied by states so as to protect human rights defenders
themselves and uphold their work.
Nevertheless, aside from these positive facets of the Court’s accessibility, the
greatest disincentive for applicants remains the length of time which is involved in
resolving cases. Even the introduction in 2010 of the priority policy has not had a
particularly discernible impact, primarily because the Court’s total backlog of cases
has remained consistently high: although case numbers have reduced since the 2011
high of over 160,000, they rose again in 2016 to a figure of just over 80,000, due in
particular to cases concerning poor prison conditions in Hungary and Romania and
large numbers emanating from the conflict zones of eastern Ukraine and from
Turkey as a result of repressive measures being taken by the state authorities
following the attempted coup d’état in 2016.
Another significant obstacle has been the inaccessibility of the Court’s decisions
in national languages: its judgments and other decisions are published in either
English or French (occasionally both). Much effort has been made very recently to
provide access through the Court’s official search engine (the HUDOC system) to
“unofficial translations” of the Court’s decisions in a variety of languages, but this
remains a significant problem for lawyers and applicants (not to mention domestic
judges and officials) who use any of the 30–40 or so other European languages but
are not sufficiently conversant with the Council of Europe’s two official languages.

Redress and Systemic Violations

The European Court has traditionally been cautious and tentative in its consideration
of redress, applying during its first four decades an essentially declaratory approach
in its judgments and limiting itself to awarding damages. As a result it has been left
behind by the Inter-American Court, which although it was established 20 years after
the European Court, has already developed a rich and progressive jurisprudence on
reparations, taking account of the victim’s life plan (proyecto de vida) and
encompassing symbolic and collective remedies. However, in more recent years,
the European Court has proved to be rather more progressive and indeed interven-
tionist, by including in its judgments binding obligations on governments to take
particular measures, such as returning property, holding rehearings of trials deemed
14 P. Leach

to be unfair, requiring detainees held unlawfully to be released, and ordering the

reinstatement of a judge who was unfairly dismissed.
Of even greater significance has been the European Court’s development of a new
approach to systemic human rights violations – those which relate to widespread or
structural issues affecting thousands. Since 2004, by invoking its “pilot-judgment
procedure,” the Court has developed an approach of explicitly identifying the source
of large-scale structural problems (usually malfunctioning legislation or a defective
legal system) and establishing a binding obligation on the government to resolve the
issue (without, however, specifying how it should be done). This may include an
obligation to legislate – and to do so within a specified time period. The majority of
pilot judgments to date have concerned disputes over property – particularly arising
from the non-enforcement of domestic court judgments and the excessive length of
legal proceedings. Initially, the respondents in such cases were predominantly states
from eastern Europe and the former Soviet bloc, but western and central European
states have also been targeted by pilot judgments, as a consequence of various
systemic failings, such as overly lengthy legal proceedings, inhuman prison condi-
tions, the disenfranchisement of convicted prisoners (the United Kingdom), and
issues arising from the breakup of Yugoslavia: lost foreign currency savings
(in various states) and the denial of the rights of the “erased” who lost their
permanent residence status after Slovenia attained independence.
These innovations have been introduced, at least in part, because of the massive
backlog of cases pending at the European Court, many of which are “repeat
violation” cases. Where states and their respective national authorities fail to resolve
at the national level issues which are adjudicated upon by the Court, more cases
raising exactly the same problem (sometimes in their thousands) pile up in Stras-
bourg. The Court’s more prescriptive position is therefore justified, and in some
cases, states have responded reasonably swiftly to pilot judgments by introducing
legislative changes aimed at the resolving the problems. However, the Court’s
increasing interventionism has also been met with growing recalcitrance in some
quarters – both from and within states. One example concerns the issue of prisoner
voting in the United Kingdom. As the UK authorities had failed to alter the ban
(enshrined in legislation) on convicted prisoners voting while they remain in prison,
following a Grand Chamber judgment on the issue in 2005, the European Court
issued a pilot judgment in 2010, requiring remedial legislation to be brought forward
within 6 months (Greens and M.T. v United Kingdom 2010). That an international
court could intervene on such a question met with strong domestic ministerial and
parliamentary disapproval, and, as a result, it was only at the end of 2017 that the UK
government finally put forward proposals to resolve this issue (by granting the
franchise to a very small number of prisoners released on licence).

The Election of Judges

European Court judges are elected (one per state) by the Parliamentary Assembly of
the Council of Europe, a body which is made up of members of the national
parliaments of the 47 states. They are elected for a single of term of 9 years,
The European Court of Human Rights: Achievements and Prospects 15

which cannot be renewed. The majority of Strasbourg judges have substantial

domestic judicial experience, although it is another strength of the system that
some judges have differing backgrounds – as former prosecutors, academics, prac-
tising lawyers, and having worked for NGOs.
The makeup of the judicial cohort has been the subject of criticism from time to
time. A good deal of this is simply “xenophobic fury” (Bratza 2011), but there is
undoubtedly still a need to improve national processes for the selection of Strasbourg
judges, to ensure that only those suitable for the highest judicial office are elected to
the Court. As it is the states which put forward a list of three candidates to the
Parliamentary Assembly, this is primarily a matter of ensuring there are rigorous,
objective national selection procedures (certainly to ensure that they are
non-politicized), backed up by close, objective scrutiny at the European level,
which enables the rejection of states’ lists where this proves necessary. In recent
years, the processes have been criticized because of the continuing under-
representation of women on the Strasbourg bench (former Judge Elisabet Fura
decried the “dominantly male” leadership of the Court (Council of Europe 2010))
and because of nepotism and the extensive efforts made by some states to ensure that
a particular (“pro-government”) candidate is elected. To its credit, the Parliamentary
Assembly has shown itself to be increasingly willing to reject states’ lists where such
problems become evident. At the time of writing, 16 of the Court’s 47 judges were
women, so there is clearly some way still to go to achieve gender balance.
One distinctive feature of the Court’s judicial practice is that it includes in its
composition to hear individual cases the judge who is the national of the defendant
state (as does the International Court of Justice but not the African Court on Human
and Peoples’ Rights). This has proven to be a strength of the system supporting its
perceived legitimacy because the “national judge” in practice plays a significant role
in elucidating the domestic law context. However, on occasions this aspect of the
Court’s procedure has been controversial where “national judges” are seen to
consistently dissent (on their own) against findings of violations of the Convention
made against “their” states.

Impact: The Implementation of Judgments

There can be no question that the decisions of the European Court over the last five
decades have been remarkably impactful. The Court’s judgments have led to numer-
ous instances of redress being provided to individual litigants, not only in the form of
the payment of damages but also, for example, by the reopening of domestic
proceedings, the withdrawal of expulsion orders, the withdrawal of arrest warrants,
and the release from custody. Of ever-greater consequence have been the myriad
ways in which domestic legislation and case law have been changed (PACE 2016),
policies amended, and public officials been newly trained to understand and apply
new standards. One study of the impact of the Convention on national systems
within 18 Council of Europe states referred to thousands of discrete legal and policy
outcomes which have been altered as a result of the influence of Convention rights
(Keller et al. 2008). The study also argued that even the original contracting states
16 P. Leach

had no real conception as to how the Convention would influence their national legal
orders and concluded that the Court’s impact, admittedly variable across states, has
increased over the years.
By dint of states’ ratification of the European Convention, the Court’s judgments
are legally binding as a matter of international law. The supervision of the imple-
mentation of the European Court judgments is carried out by the Committee of
Ministers, which holds four meetings a year (involving state diplomats) to consider
and debate the most pressing cases, leading to the publication of decisions and
interim resolutions encouraging and cajoling state compliance and final resolutions
where a case is considered to have been fully implemented.
Nevertheless, the question of the implementation of the European Court’s judg-
ments – whether states comply with its rulings and whether adequate steps are taken
at the national level as a consequence – has become one of the most dominant and
recurring issues affecting debates about the validity and legitimacy of the European
human rights system. In far too many cases, state authorities are failing to respond
adequately to the Court’s judgments, which require legislative amendments, changes
in policy or practice, or a much more significant domestic political investment to
tackle large-scale systemic problems. As a consequence, the Committee of Minis-
ters’ caseload has risen in recent years to a figure consistently around
10,000–11,000. There has also been an increase in the number of cases pending
for more than 5 years: by 2015, these amounted to 55% of the pending cases.
The question of implementation is in some cases inextricably linked to the nature
of the redress which the Court grants – the more specific the nature of the redress
stipulated, the easier it is to assess whether or not compliance has been achieved. In a
case brought against Azerbaijan concerning criminal proceedings instigated against
the activist and opposition blogger Ilgar Mammadov, the Court found in its 2014
judgment that the criminal proceedings brought against him had in fact been
intended to punish him for criticising the government, and the Committee of
Ministers subsequently called for his release. As he nevertheless remained in
custody, the Secretary General of the Council of Europe, Thorbjørn Jagland,
weighed in by opening an inquiry into the implementation of the judgment under
Article 52 of the Convention. At the time of writing, however, Mr. Mammadov still
languishes in prison.
One new mechanism – “infringement proceedings” – was recently adopted by the
Council of Europe states as an additional means to improve levels of implementa-
tion. Where a state fails to comply with a judgment, the Committee of Ministers may
refer the case back to the Court. It does not incorporate a “sanction” as such, but such
a process would reflect the strong disapproval of the Council of Europe and would
represent a significant diplomatic embarrassment for recalcitrant states and could
therefore exert enough pressure to leverage change. However, since it was intro-
duced in 2010, the mechanism has only ever been invoked once (at the end of 2017
in relation to the Ilgar Mammadov case). Given the high rate of non-implementation
of the European Court judgments, this is inexplicable, unless one is resigned to the
fact that the Committee of Ministers’ process is a relatively toothless system based
on peer pressure, with states’ primary objectives being to avoid being identified
themselves as violators of the Convention.
The European Court of Human Rights: Achievements and Prospects 17

The Future Potential and the Challenges Ahead

The principal challenges for the European Court in the coming years are likely to be
questions about its legitimacy, the weight of its caseload, and the extent to which
there is state compliance and effective implementation of its judgments. Although
the Court’s reasoning and its practices in particular circumstances can of course be
criticized (and indeed the system undoubtedly benefits from close external scrutiny),
the primary drivers of debates about the Court’s “legitimacy” have been govern-
ments and politicians (and sometimes domestic judges) who object to being thwarted
from carrying through measures which would breach the European human rights
standards. To protect the rights of minorities by pointing out the errors of majoritar-
ian ways, will often not be popular. However, this does not mean that the Court can
be described as having no “legitimacy,” in order to undermine its practices and
decisions. On the contrary, it retains its legitimacy through, among other things, the
level of voluntary state accession (47 states), the fact that its judges are elected by
national parliamentarians from those states and, above all, through its (usually)
carefully reasoned jurisprudence and its judicial self-restraint.
Be that as it may, hostility toward the Court remains a political reality, which has
led in recent years, in states such as Russia and the United Kingdom, to calls at the
highest levels for withdrawal from the jurisdiction of the Court. Yet, the only country
to have done so was Greece under the control of a military junta in the late 1960s – it
remains the case that no democratic state has ever done so. Almost on a par is the
challenge of states seeking to water down their obligations arising from the Court’s
judgments, exemplified by the law introduced in Russia in 2015 which, in effect,
allows its Constitutional Court to pick and choose which European Court judgments
to implement. Such developments must be resisted in order to maintain a viable
human rights system with binding legal force.
The vast number of cases which have been, and continue to be, submitted to the
Court from across Europe arguably reflect contradictory influences – both the level
of respect and trust which leads applicants to petition the Court and the extent to
which states have failed to resolve repeat violations. However, the vast majority of
cases submitted continue to be declared inadmissible by the Court (more than 90%),
which means that too much of the Court’s time is taken up with disposing of clearly
unmeritorious cases and that the meritorious cases take far too long to be processed.
This issue seems to indicate a continuing need for better training of the legal
profession across the continent.
More fundamentally, the backlog is also indicative of an underlying “crisis of
implementation” – state authorities (governments, parliaments, the courts, and other
bodies) are failing to respond adequately to address the shortcomings which the
Court has highlighted (in some cases, again and again and again). This is the other
side of the subsidiarity principle – that the Convention should be effectively applied
and enforced at the national level. A new protocol to the Convention (Protocol
No. 16) adopted in 2013 will, once it enters into force, enable the European Court to
issue advisory opinions on the application of the Convention at the request of the
highest domestic courts. This could, in theory, provide states with an “early warning
system” which highlights problematic areas before they arise and are litigated at the
18 P. Leach

Strasbourg Court. However, its efficacy will depend on the extent to which national
authorities prove to be willing and able to respond to the European Court’s guidance
by amending its law and practice appropriately and in good time. In any event, the
Court’s newer strategies for tackling systemic violations through a more collective
approach (including pilot judgments) will need to be developed further, and a variety
of means found of assisting states in devising and implementing the reforms which
are needed to resolve the most widespread, endemic breaches. The Council of
Europe states need to take the erga omnes principle seriously, by carefully scruti-
nizing each of the Court’s significant judgments of principle (notably Grand Cham-
ber decisions) in order to consider their application within the particular national
context and to maintain rigorous systems of auditing of draft legislation (involving
parliamentarians supported by expert legal advice) to ensure Convention compli-
ance. Law students, lawyers, and national judges need access to, and thorough
training in, the Court’s case law, and the training of all public officials should
inculcate an understanding of the essential principles and standards (which are
most relevant to their roles) which the Convention lays down.
One question which has been debated for decades, but which still remains
unresolved, is the accession of the European Union to the European Convention.
This is intended to improve the harmonization of human rights standards in Europe
and in particular to ensure that the acts of EU institutions are subject to the scrutiny
of the European Court of Human Rights. The process was stalled in 2014 when the
Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) issued a critical opinion on the draft
agreement for accession. There is no sign of any recent political desire to reactivate
the accession process, and it has no doubt been further sidelined by the ongoing
negotiations concerning “Brexit” (the process of the United Kingdom leaving the
European Union, following the referendum in 2016).
The debate about the need to reform the Strasbourg Court has continued for
several decades, driven predominantly by the problems created by the excessive
caseload. At the heart of this debate has been, or should be, a fundamental question
about the role of the Court. Although the Convention’s preamble envisages a
collective obligation on the European states to ensure compliance with the Conven-
tion, the reality is that the Court’s work over the last six decades has been concerned
with thousands of individual applications. In recent years, there has been a tendency
for the debate to be polarized between those who emphasize the importance of the
right of individual petition and the principle of access to justice and those who argue
that the Court should only deal with the most “important” cases, acting akin to a
constitutional court for the region and setting standards for the continent as a whole.
Through the adoption of a prioritization policy and the development of the pilot-
judgment procedure since the mid-2000s, the Court has already taken important
steps in developing a more focused and collective approach, which could still be
taken further. There needs to be a rather more nuanced recognition of the various
distinctive tasks which the Court can and should carry out, encompassing Grand
Chamber decisions on significant legal questions which set standards for the conti-
nent as a whole and upholding the right of individual petition, particularly in
developing areas of law and in relation to egregious or systemic human rights
The European Court of Human Rights: Achievements and Prospects 19

violations. This is an approach which acknowledges the Convention system as “an

authoritative, dynamic, and transnational source of law’” (Keller and Stone Sweet
2008) for the continent of Europe but also one which is predicated on truly effective
implementation at the national level.

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20 P. Leach

European Court of Human Rights Jurisprudence

A and others v. United Kingdom, Application No. 3455/05, Judgment of 19 February 2009
A, B & C v. Ireland, Application No. 25579/05, Judgment of 16 December 2010
Alekseyev v. Russia, Application Nos. 4916/07, 25924/08 & 14599/09, Judgment of 22 October
2010
Al-Skeini v. United Kingdom, Application No. 55721/07, Judgment of 7 July 2011
Aslakhanova and Others v. Russia, Application Nos. 2944/06 et al, Judgment of 18 December 2012
Bouyid v. Belgium, Application No. 23380/09, Judgment of 28 September 2015
Broniowski v. Poland, Application No. 31443/96, Judgment of 22 June 2004
Castells v. Spain, Application No. 11798/85, Judgment of 23 April 1992
Centre for Legal Resources on behalf of Valentin C^ampeanu v. Romania, Application No. 47848/
08, Judgment of 17 July 2014
Chiragov and Others v. Armenia, Application No. 13216/05, Judgment of 16 June 2015
Diri v. Turkey, Application No. 68351/01, Judgment of 31 July 2007
Dudgeon v. United Kingdom, Application No. 7525/76, Judgment of 23 September 1981
El-Masri v. the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Application No. 39630/09, Judgment of
13 December 2012
Evans v. United Kingdom, Application No. 6399/05, Judgment of 10 April 2007
Gäfgen v. Germany, Application No. 22978/05, Judgment of 1 June 2010
Greens and M.T. v. United Kingdom, Application Nos. 60041/08 and 60054/08, Judgment of
23 November 2010
Handyside v. United Kingdom, Application No. 5493/72, Judgment of 7 December 1976
Hassan v. United Kingdom, Application No. 29750/09, Judgment of 16 September 2014
Ilgar Mammadov v. Azerbaijan, Application No. 15172/13, Judgment of 22 May 2014
Ireland v. United Kingdom, Application, No. 5310/71, Judgment of 18 January 1978
Lashmankin v. Russia, Application No. 57818/09, Judgment of 7 February 2017
Lautsi and Others v. Italy, Application No. 30814/06, Judgment of 18 March 2011
Leyla Sahin v Turkey, Application No. 44774/98, Judgment of 10 November 2005
M.C. v. Bulgaria, Application No. 39272/98, Judgment of 4 December 2003
M.S.S. v Belgium and Greece, Application No. 30696/09, Judgment of 21 January 2011
Malone v. United Kingdom, Application No. 8691/79, Judgment of 2 August 1984
Merabishvili v. Georgia, Application No. 72508/13, Judgment of 28 November 2017
Observer and Guardian v. United Kingdom, Application No. 13585/88, Judgment of 26 November
1991
Oleksandr Volkov v. Ukraine, Application No. 21722/11, Judgment of 9 January 2013
Opuz v. Turkey, Application No. 33401/02, Judgment of 9 June 2009
Othman (Abu Qatada) v. United Kingdom, Application No. 8139/09, Judgment of 17 January 2012
R.R. v. Hungary, Application No. 8139/09, Judgment of 4 December 2012
Rantsev v. Cyprus and Russia, Application No. 25965/04, Judgment of 7 January 2010
Rasul Jafarov v. Azerbaijan, Application No. 69981/14, Judgment of 17 March 2016
Roman Zakharov v. Russia, Application No. 47143/06, Judgment of 4 December 2015
Rustavi 2 Broadcasting Company v. Georgia, Application No. 16812/17 (pending) 2017
Saadi v. Italy, Application No. 37201/06, Judgment of 28 February 2008
Sargsyan v. Azerbaijan, Application No. 40167/06, Judgment of 16 June 2015
Siliadin v. France, Application No. 73316/01, Judgment of 26 July 2005
Soering v. United Kingdom, Application No. 14038/88, Judgment of 7 July 1989
Sunday Times v. United Kingdom (No. 1), Application No. 6538/74, Judgment of 26 April 1979
Sürek v. Turkey (No. 1), Application No. 26682/95, Judgment of 8 July 1999
United Communist Party of Turkey and others v. Turkey, Application No. 19392/92, Judgment of
30 January 1998
Yordanova v. Bulgaria, Application No. 25446/06, Judgment of 24 April 2012