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Assessing the Impact of the ECHR on National Legal Systems
Abstract
The European Convention on Human Rights has evolved into a sophisticated legal system, whose formal reach into the domestic law and politics of the Contracting States is limited only by the ever-widening scope of the Convention itself, as determined by a transnational court. In this book, a team of distinguished scholars trace and evaluate, comparatively, the impact of the ECHR and the European Court of Human Rights on law and politics in eighteen national systems: Ireland-UK; France-Germany, Italy-Spain, Belgium-Netherlands, Norway-Sweden, Greece-Turkey, Russia-Ukraine, Poland-Slovakia, and Austria-Switzerland. Although the Court's jurisprudence has provoked significant structural, procedural, and policy innovation in every State examined, its impact varies widely across States and legal domains. The book charts this variation and seeks to explain it. Across Europe, national officials — in governments, legislatures, and judiciaries — have chosen to incorporate the ECHR into domestic law, and they have developed a host of mechanisms designed to adapt the national legal system to the ECHR as it evolves. But how and why State actors have done so varies in important ways, and these differences heavily determine the relative status and effectiveness of Convention rights in national systems. Although problems persist, the book shows that national officials are, gradually but inexorably, being socialized into a Europe of rights, a unique transnational legal space now developing its own logics of political and juridical legitimacy.
... теорији. 18 Управо због тако различитих мишљења о овом појму, како бих дефинисао уставни идентитет онако како га ја схватам у овом раду, изложићу основне теоријске концепције овог појма (2.1), а потом и његову могућу садржину и то како уопште, тако и у случају Србије (2.2). ...
... Устав представља фундаментални општи правни акт који установљава политичке институције, 21 али истовремено установљава и народ који живи под таквим уставом, градећи тако уставни идентитет таквог народа који се може разликовати од других 18 17-36. 20 Примера ради, Розенфелд наводи три значења: прво, да ли држава има уставни идентитет на основу саме чињенице постојања устава (дакле, без обзира на његову садржину); друго, да ли држава има уставни иденитет само онда када садржи одговарајуће одредбе и треће значење подразумева да се уставни идентитет гради у специфичном контексту сваке поједине државе. ...
U ovom radu ispituje se kakvi su mogući uticaji istorijskih ustava Srbije i Jugoslavije na koncept ustavnog identiteta, koji autor vidi kao složen teorijski pojam koji ima i svoju praktičnu dimenziju. On polazi od pretpostavke da su tzv. istorijski ustavi uticali na elemente savremenog ustavnog identiteta Srbije. U skladu sa tim, rad se sastoji iz tri dela. U prvom delu, autor analizira moguća značenja ustavnog identiteta i to kao teorijskog koncepta, sa jedne, odnosno praktičnog, sa druge strane, konsultujući obimnu domaću i stranu literaturu. U tom delu analiziraju se brojna, veoma različita značenja ovog koncepta, kako bi se „pronašao“ mogući sadržaj i kako bi se ovaj pojam učinio „praktično korisnim“. Mogući sadržaj ustavnog identiteta autor vidi u ustavnim načelima, s obzirom na to da se na njima temelji važeći poredak. U drugom delu daje se kratak, više analitički nego deskriptivni prikaz razvoja ustavne istorije. U trećem delu, autor vrši predmetnu analizu ustavnih načela sadržanih u Ustavu Srbije od 2006. godine, raspravljajući tako o uticaju istorijskih ustava i potencijalnom sadržaju savremenog nacionalnog ustavnog identiteta. Konačno, u zaključku autor navodi da su veoma prisutni uticaji istorijskih ustava na ustavni identitet savremene Srbije, ali da je sadržaj ovog koncepta u velikoj meri oblikovala i politička praksa. Autor dodaje i da ustavni identitet nije samo doktrinarno pitanje političke i (ustavno)istorijske svesti, već jedan praktični koncept kojim bi se u budućnosti mogao služiti i Ustavni sud Srbije, kako su to činili i čine ustavni sudovi brojnih evropskih država.
... 27 Similarly, the ECtHR has increasingly engaged in constitutional justice beyond individual justice to the extent that '[s]tates are routinely required to reform their internal law and practices in response to findings of violations by the Court'. 28 The second implication is, in contrast, what the present author terms the internationalisation of constitutional adjudication. As predicted based on Georges Scelle's dédoublement fonctionnel theory, the institutional deficiencies that affect global governance still require domestic courts to promote international goals. ...
Through gaining lessons from the doctrine of constitutionality control, the book deals principally with conventionality control achieved by judicial adjudicators. This monograph fills the gap in comparative international human rights law by analysing the practice of conventionality control in Europe and Latin America. Based on the empirical data, the author normatively envisions a ‘trapezium’ model of conventionality control with the features of openness, substantivism and human-centrism, which overcomes the limits of the closed, formalist, and State-centric ‘pyramid‘ model. Author: Yota Negishi, Associate Professor of Public International Law, Seinan Gakuin University, Fukuoka, Japan.
... 19 Meaning whole teams of individual judges, including their clerks. 20 The most comprehensive is arguably in Keller and Stone Sweet (2008 ...
This chapter describes the general theoretical background of the study “Narrating the Rule of Law”, which builds on approaches and findings from political science, history, sociology and cultural studies. The point of departure is the neo-institutionalist assumption that existing orders influence actors’ behaviour, but that actors can also use or try to modify these orders according to their interests or normative ideas. They do so by using, constructing and circulating ideas and beliefs through discourse. We further assume that the specific context matters for how politicians refer to the rule of law. In this chapter, we apply the general analytical framework to trace the history of the liberal rule of law and illustrate some ‘classical’ conflicts surrounding its meaning and development, including the essential role of politicians (and judges) in this process. We develop these considerations and discuss why national and temporal differences in the rule of law narratives are conceivable. Finally, we discuss potential conflicts and narratives that may arise from party competition, the government–opposition divide and differing rationale of politicians’ and judges’ views of the rule of law.
The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) is the protector of the Eu- ropean Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) with jurisdiction to “ensure the observance of the engagements” on this act, which represents the base of European law on human rights and freedoms. Important questions about this institution and this act are related to their nature. Some authors think that the Convention and the Court resemble the constitution and the constitutional court, respectively. This article seeks to review this conception by analyzing two questions: (1) Is the ECHR a Constitution of Europe, and (2) is the EC- tHR a European Constitutional Court? In seeking answers to these questions, we will describe the typical characteristics of a constitution (materia constitu- tionis) and compare them with the characteristics of the ECHR. Afterwards, we will describe the typical characteristics of constitutional courts and their reasoning in order to compare them with the ECtHR’s institutional role and its reasoning. In particular, the effect of the decisions of the constitutional courts and the ECtHR will be analyzed, as well as the criteria (which are not necessarily legal) used by these institutions in the process of reasoning. Re- gardless of the nature of this act and this institution, this paper tends to show that the ECHR and decisions of the ECtHR have an important role in the con- stitutionalization of legal orders of European countries.
The Proposal for a Directive on Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence (EU) 2019/1937, COM/2022/71 final, 23 February 2022, ‘CSDDD’) if enacted, would extend responsibilities, liability and exposure to administrative penalties to large economic actors for failure to comply with human rights and environmental obligations. The main purpose of this proposal is to establish a binding set of legal norms to increase access to legal enforcement by linking a breach of the due diligence obligation to public sanctions (Article 20) and civil liability. However, as we analyse in this article, the proposal would significantly limit the scope and content of companies' due diligence as compared to the process foreseen by the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights to which it seeks to give greater effect, while limiting the rights to be protected, and the class of companies obliged to exercise due diligence. At the same time, as we explain, the proposed Directive may jeopardize the integrity of European human rights law as articulated by the judicial and other organs of the Council of Europe, and at the national level
Through gaining lessons from the doctrine of constitutionality control, the book deals principally with conventionality control achieved by judicial adjudicators. This monograph fills the gap in comparative international human rights law by analysing the practice of conventionality control in Europe and Latin America. Based on the empirical data, the author normatively envisions a ‘trapezium’ model of conventionality control with the features of openness, substantivism and human-centrism, which overcomes the limits of the closed, formalist, and State-centric ‘pyramid‘ model. Author: Yota Negishi, Associate Professor of Public International Law, Seinan Gakuin University, Fukuoka, Japan.
In Malone v. UK (Plenary 1984), the right to an effective domestic remedy in the European Convention on Human Rights Article 13 was famously described as one of the most obscure clauses in the Convention. Since then, the European Court of Human Rights has reinforced the scope and application of the right. Through an analysis of virtually all of the Court's judgments concerning Article 13, the book exhaustively accounts for the development and current scope and content of the right. The book also provides normative recommendations on how the Court could further develop the right, most notably how it could be a tool to regulate the relationship between domestic and international protection of human rights. In doing so, the book situates itself within larger debates on the enforcement of the entire Convention such as the principle of subsidiarity and the procedural turn in the Court's case law.
This paper firstly reviews the role of comparative law in the field of family law, and then links it with the case law of the ECtHR on Article 8 ECHR. As the court tackles conflicts involving the interests of individuals in a variety of situations, it tends to embark very often in a comparative analysis of the family law in force in a number of jurisdictions to ascertain the validity of the applicable laws and whether a margin of appreciation of the State exists. In addition, the court has deployed a dynamic interpretation of the convention to ensure that the rights recognized therein have a real and effective protection in a changing society. The similarities and differences in national legal systems, the awareness of possible common trends and the evolution of domestic legal systems, all helps to shape the obligations that the ECtHR derives from Article 8. Taking for granted that comparative law is the only possible methodology in order to construe the provisions of the convention, the only one providing for decisive arguments in its interpretation, easily justifies the criticisms of the legal scholarship that is challenging the developments brought about by the ECHR in the ambit of personal and family matters.
La proportionnalité a progressivement pris une place centrale dans l’imaginaire juridique. Initialement conçue comme un principe régissant l’utilisation des pouvoirs de police, elle est aujourd’hui considérée comme un outil avancé de science constitutionnelle. Sa généralisation, accompagnée par le paradigme du droit constitutionnel global, est perçue comme irrésistible et naturelle. Cette recherche a été guidée par l’intuition que, même si les juristes à travers le monde raisonnent de plus en plus en termes de proportionnalité, celle-ci peut avoir des sens très différents, et ce, même au sein d’un seul système juridique. Les différentes utilisations du langage de la proportionnalité sont rarement étudiées en tant que telles. Pour autant, l’identification des sens locaux de la proportionnalité est cruciale si l’on veut comprendre sa propagation, apprécier son succès et évaluer les possibilités de convergence entre systèmes juridiques. Ce travail consiste en une étude approfondie et comparative de l’utilisation du langage de la proportionnalité parmi les acteurs juridiques en France, en Angleterre et en Grèce. Il cherche à montrer que les sens locaux de la proportionnalité ne sont pas simplement des applications imparfaites d’un modèle global. Au contraire, ils reflètent les cultures au sein desquelles ils évoluent, des chemins d’évolution culturelle propres à chaque système et des trajectoires locales d’européanisation.
In A Cosmopolitan Legal Order: Kant, Constitutional Justice, and the ECHR , we sought to demonstrate the power of Kantian theory to explain – or at least meaningfully illuminate – (1) the defining characteristics of modern, rights-based constitutionalism; (2) the evolving law, politics and constitutional architecture of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR); and (3) the emergence of a global, cosmopolitan commons, featuring inter-judicial dialogue at its core. This article responds to contributors to the special symposium on the book. In Part I, we defend our account of a Kantian-congruent, domestic system of constitutional justice. Part II reflects on the ECHR as an instantiation of a cosmopolitan legal order, and on the European Court’s case law – particularly its enforcement of the proportionality principle. In Part III, we assess the evidence in support of a broader ‘constitutionalization’ of international human rights law.
The article studies practice of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation in the field of socio-economic rights. The statistical data analysed illustrates the ever-present socio-economic theme among constitutional complaints lodged with the Constitutional Court, with the lowering of overall proportion of such complaints and increasing of the number of such complaints related to defence of property. Such statistics appear to be consistent with the Court’s role in the ongoing transition from Soviet-style planned economy to free market, which implies a substantial shift of obligations connected with property management and social responsibilities from the State to citizens themselves. It follows from the Constitutional Court practice and doctrine that such shift should be done delicately, giving the citizens sufficient period of time to adapt to the changes. In the article, the author focuses on the following categories of complaints considered by the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation: protection of the right to private property and protection of the right to pension provision. The author observes that the delicate balance that needs to be preserved when dealing with the cases of this type and the slow-pace nature of the transition process often results in criticism towards the Court, notwithstanding the rationale of its decisions. It follows that such criticism is somewhat natural; what matters is the Court’s understanding of its mission in the socio-economic field, and maintaining balanced and well-reasoned approach in development of its case-law.
Die Untersuchung hat bislang gezeigt, dass innerstaatliche Gerichte zu wichtigen Partnern der Menschenrechtsgerichte geworden sind und in zahlreichen Situationen und Konstellationen bereit sind, diese im Rahmen der innerstaatlichen Umsetzung ihrer Entscheidungen zu unterstützen. Dabei hat die Untersuchung ebenfalls deutlich gemacht, dass nationale Gerichte sich in den wenigsten Fällen als simple „Erfüllungsgehilfen“ der Menschenrechtsgerichte verstehen. Vielmehr beharren sie regelmäßig auf einer gewissen Kontrolle über die Entscheidungen und bringen nicht selten zum Ausdruck, dass sie notfalls gar gewillt sind einer Entscheidung die Befolgung zu versagen, wenn sie dies für erforderlich halten.
Auch dem IAGMR kommt die Kompetenz zu, bindende Entscheidungen zu fällen. Dabei gelten gegenüber dem europäischen System jedoch zwei fundamentale Unterschiede: Zum einen haben nicht alle Mitgliedstaaten der Organisation Amerikanischer Staaten (OAS) die AMRK ratifiziert; auch nicht alle AMRK-Mitgliedstaaten haben sich zudem der Gerichtsbarkeit des IAGMR unterworfen. Zum anderen sind individuelle Beschwerdeführer nicht direkt Partei im Verfahren vor dem IAGMR, wie sich aus Art. 61 AMRK ergibt. Vielmehr können Individuen in Einklang mit Art. 44 der Konvention lediglich an die interamerikanische Kommission gelangen. Diese nimmt eine wichtige Filterfunktion wahr, indem sie zunächst eine einvernehmliche Lösung zwischen den Parteien anstrebt (Art. 48 Abs. 1 lit. f AMRK). Kommt eine solche nicht zustande, verfasst sie entweder einen Schlussbericht (Art. 51 Abs. 1 AMRK und 47 der Verfahrensordnung) oder leitet den Fall an den Gerichtshof weiter. Die Entscheidung, wann ein Fall vor den Gerichtshof gebracht wird, liegt „solely and autonomously“ in den Händen der Kommission, wie der IAGMR bestätigt hat. Die Kommission hat dafür Kriterien entwickelt, die nun in der Verfahrensordnung niedergelegt sind. Demnach spielt die Position des Beschwerdeführers eine Rolle, aber auch die Schwere und Natur der Verletzung sowie die Erforderlichkeit der Entwicklung oder Klärung der Rechtsprechung und die künftigen Auswirkungen der Entscheidung. In dem Verfahren vor dem Gerichtshof selbst ist eine Verfahrensbeteiligung von Individuen ausgeschlossen; einzig die Kommission und Mitgliedstaaten können formell als Verfahrenspartei auftreten (Art. 61 Abs. 1 AMRK).
Das Open-Access-Buch untersucht am Beispiel des Europäischen Gerichtshofs für Menschenrechte (EGMR) und des Interamerikanischen Menschenrechtsgerichtshofs (IAGMR), welche Rolle innerstaatliche Gerichte bei der Umsetzung internationaler Entscheidungen wahrnehmen. Wann sind sie bereit ihre Pendants in Straßburg bzw. San José bei der Umsetzung ihrer Entscheidungen zu unterstützen und diese gleichsam unmittelbar „anzuwenden“, und wo ziehen sie Grenzen und rote Linien? Was sind die Probleme, die ihnen begegnen, und befinden sich Gerichte tatsächlich im Wandel hin zu einer defensiveren und weniger völkerrechtsfreundlichen Haltung, wie einige jüngere Beispiele vermuten lassen?
Das Werk widmet sich der Frage, welche Wirkungen innerstaatliche Gerichte bereit sind, den Entscheidungen der Menschenrechtsgerichte zukommen zu lassen – und zwar genau dann, wenn sich das innerstaatliche Recht nicht dazu äußert. Es zeigt auf, dass hinter der vermeintlich technischen Ausgangsfrage fundamentale Fragen verfassungsrechtlicher Natur stehen und sich am Beispiel der Menschenrechtsgerichte einige der zentralen Schwierigkeiten und Probleme zeigen, wie sie beim Zusammenspiel von Rechtsordnungen in Zeiten globalen Regierens entstehen.
Lange Zeit herrschte in Einklang mit dem staatenzentrierten Völkerrechtsverständnis die Auffassung vor, dass die Umsetzung internationaler Entscheidungen auf der innerstaatlichen Ebene eine Aufgabe der Exekutive sei. Innerstaatlichen Gerichten wurde lediglich da eine Rolle zuerkannt, wo es um die Vollstreckung vermögensrechtlicher Ansprüche ging. So kam Schreuer 1977 zum Schluss, dass die „Anrufung staatlicher Gerichte zur Durchsetzung oder Überprüfung von Entscheidungen internationaler Gerichte und Schiedsgerichte […] insbesondere dann sinnvoll und erfolgversprechend [erscheint], wenn die auf internationaler Ebene entschiedenen Ansprüche vermögensrechtlicher Natur sind.“ Jenks fand gar, dass es eindeutig undurchführbar und unangemessen sei, andere Arten von Entscheidungen vor innerstaatlichen Gerichten durchzusetzen. Grund dafür ist hauptsächlich, dass bei vermögensrechtlichen Urteilen selten Umsetzungs- oder Transformationsakte erforderlich sind und die Durchsetzung daher regelmäßig im Kompetenzbereich von Gerichten liegt.
Über die Jahre haben die beiden Menschenrechtsgerichte nicht nur die Konventionsgarantien mit Leben gefüllt, sondern auch die Wirkungen ihrer Entscheidungen und deren Umsetzung auf der innerstaatlichen Ebene entscheidend vorangetrieben. Der IAGMR, der in einem Umfeld schwach ausgeprägter rechtsstaatlicher Strukturen agierte und sich mit teils schwersten Menschenrechtsverletzungen konfrontiert sah, ging dabei deutlich weiter als der EGMR. Nicht nur sah er kaum Raum für Spielräume und begann den Mitgliedstaaten in seinen Urteilen deutlich engmaschigere Vorschriften zu machen. Darüber hinaus sah er sich gezwungen, die Schlagkraft seiner Entscheidungen zu erhöhen, indem er innerstaatliche Gerichte verpflichtete, diesen über den entschiedenen Einzelfall hinaus rechtliche Bedeutung zuzuerkennen. Insgesamt vertritt der IAGMR bis heute eine sehr hierarchische, gleichsam monistische Sichtweise auf sein Verhältnis zu den Mitgliedstaaten und ihren Gerichten.
Abstract
This article provides an overview of the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights (hereinafter “the ECtHR”) regarding the length of civil and criminal proceedings in Russia and the Czech Republic. Analysis shows that the Czech Republic has passed a long way in solving the problem of ‘reasonable time’ and, today, its legislation and practice are to a large extent in compliance with the European Convention on Human Rights (hereinafter “the ECHR”). In Russian Federation, the problem in question was partially solved by Law no. 68-FZ. However, judicial practice has shown that the application of this law has its shortcomings, which led to the adoption of the second pilot judgment of the ECtHR against Russia in the case of Gerasimov and Others v. Russia. Therefore, it could be of use for the Russian authorities to study the experience of the Czech Republic in order to resolve this long-standing problem in the near future.
Keywords: European Court of Human Rights, European Convention on Human Rights, ECtHR, ECHR, length of proceedings, Russia, Czech Republic.
Central and Eastern European countries have in last decades faced several obstacles to establish full-functioning liberal constitutional democracies and the rule of law. This article studies the impact of the European Court of Human Rights on the rule of law in Central and Eastern Europe by examining reasons for high number of judgements finding violations and difficulties in executing judgements in several of Central and Eastern Europe states. It analyses the contribution of the European Court of Human Rights in Central and Eastern Europe and asks whether its judgements have provided fundamental standards in the key dimensions of the rule of law. It does so by establishing the quadruple theoretical framework of the rule of law composed of: dealing with the past violations; the independence, impartiality and fairness of judiciary; pluralism, broadmindedness and tolerance; and protections under the right to life and the prohibition on torture, inhumane and degrading treatment. Central and Eastern European states have in last decades attempted to translate the rule of law de iure within governmental institutions and beyond. They have also attempted to internalise the values of the rule of law, constitutional democracy and democratic process. Equipped with this knowledge, this article argues that the European Court of Human Rights has contributed to establishing the rule of law de iure in Central and Eastern European countries, however its impact on the rule of law has been in practice limited due to institutional and policy limitations and wide-spread conundrums relating to the separation of powers, weak institutions and corruption. Therefore its values have yet to be internalised fully in domestic settings.
Until this day, no scholarly research has squarely dealt with the process of reception of international law into Ethiopia’s domestic legal system and its status and relationship with domestic laws. Some works have addressed the position of international human rights treaties in the Ethiopian legal order. However, the vexing issues that need clarification are: the process of reception of treaties and non-treaty sources of international law into the Ethiopian legal system; whether there are requirements to be met for the direct application of ratified treaties by Ethiopian courts and other state organs; the hierarchical relations between international law applicable to Ethiopia and its national laws; and the division of treaty-making power within the country’s federal legal system. This article addresses these critical legal issues.
The purpose of this work is to bring to light the relationship between the positive obligations of incrimination under the ECHR and the constitutional principle of the legislature’s exclusive power to create crimes and establish criminal sanctions. This theme has a peculiar place within the general theme of judicial review of political power, providing food for thought regarding the grounds of appeal that underpins the hypothesis of checks on the inertia of the legislator in the face of positive obligations deriving from the international level in matters traditionally entrusted to the discretion of the Parliament. In this regard, the failure of the Italian legislature to introduce into Italian legal system the legal obligation of the Strasbourg Court to punish the conduct of torture shall be taken as a prime example. As will be explained, the Italian system recognizes one type of decision of the Constitutional Court—additive judgments—which consents to the censuring of omissions incurred by the legislature. However, such decisions cannot be made whenever they would have the effect of expanding the area of punishment, because doing so would lead to a conflict with the principle of nullum crimen, nulla poena sine lege, expressed in article 25, paragraph 2 of the Constitution. The impossibility of proposing a solution to the omissions of the legislator, in accordance and with respect to the aforementioned principle, therefore, creates a problematic and tense relationship between the fulfillment of international obligations set forth by the Strasbourg Court and the Italian legal order, leading to a possible breakage.
What motivates states to commit to international human rights treaties remains a contested question in political and legal science. Many tentative explanations for the observed variation in ratification patterns have been proposed. Some are based on the content of the treaties (the substance of the protected rights and the control mechanisms), others are tied to external factors (having originated either from pressure of the international community or within the domestic political system). In any case, empirical evidence supporting the proposed hypotheses remains rather scarce and overall knowledge about the reasons for signing and ratifying treaties is inconclusive. We aim to contribute to the scholarly discussion by providing a new and thorough examination of the commitment practices in two post-communist countries, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, and also in their common predecessors, the undemocratic illiberal Czechoslovakia and then the transitioning Czechoslovak Federation. While both new countries have experienced very similar international development that is propelled by the same international incentives and constraints, their internal political experience differs significantly. It is those differences which make these countries promising and productive ‘laboratories’ for investigation.
The European Court of Human Rights recently has introduced a variety of instruments to streamline the flow of applications and to address the handling of repetitive applications. This article discusses one of these instruments — the indication of “general measures” in the operative part of the Court’s judgments, a reform introduced in 2004. This article also discusses the issues likely to cause the Court to indicate “general measures” in its judgments against Ukraine: the length of judicial proceedings and the conditions of detention.
This chapter examines the growing phenomenon of “transjudicial dialogue” between judges in different national jurisdictions and judges in the international courts. It takes the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) as an example of an international court which has engaged actively in such dialogue, reviewing the communications between judges of this court and those of the UK Supreme Court in their respective judgements in the cases of Al-Khawaja [2011] and R v Horncastle [2009], respectively. It concludes that such communications do not erode but instead support the individuality and distinctiveness of judicial systems and, by encouraging knowledge and mutual respect between courts, improve the quality of judgements.
Constitutional courts have made a fundamental contribution in clarifying the domestic binding force of the European Convention on Human Rights, in spite of the divergences as to its status in domestic law. This article examines the status of the Convention in domestic legal systems, which remains a question of constitutional law; and the status and implementation of the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights. It looks at four domestic systems, selected for their particular relevance. Three of them have a written constitution (Germany, France, and Belgium) and the fourth, the United Kingdom, has a human rights 'catalogue' (the Human Rights Act 1998) comparable to a constitution.
It is often assumed that privacy and security are alternative values, which cannot be pursued together. Hence, the strength of the “nothing-to-hide argument”: if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. Besides, ensuring the security of the network itself is said to actually require a detailed analysis of network flows. Reasonable expectations of privacy should thus progressively disappear in cyberspace. While it is true that enforcement of legal rules is a real challenge when communications are transmitted through the means of a borderless network, the evolution of the case law of the European Court of Human Right recently followed by the Court of Justice of the European Union does show that the right to respect for private life should have important implications online and in particular should significantly restrict the systematic collection and retention of content and traffic data by both public and private actors such as Internet service providers. At a time at which data-gathering and data-matching technologies are more sophisticated than ever, as illustrated by Snowden’s revelations, it is crucial to fully comprehend the interaction between the protection of privacy and the furtherance of security in order to set appropriate limits to surveillance practices. The purpose of this chapter is therefore twofold: first, to shed light upon the European approach to privacy and explain the interplay between privacy law, data protection law and data retention law; second, to explain how the values of privacy and security should be balanced together and in particular how privacy law should serve to scrutinise the appropriateness of measures implemented to ensure the security of the social group at large.
This study presents the results of a survey of 72 civil society organisations in Italy that work against the Mafia. The study investigated their perceptions of the anti-Mafia movement in four main areas: (1) government performance, (2) civil society performance, (3) the government-civil society relationship, and (4) the Mafia phenomenon and anti-Mafia policies. The study first revealed that civil society is not satisfied with the government's performance on anti-Mafia policies. Second, civil society finds its own performance relatively better than the government's, although it needs improvement. Third, civil society perceives a conflict between the government and civil society concerning anti-Mafia policies. Fourth, the Mafia-politician network is seen by civil society as the most important factor in the Mafia's power. Finally, creating a culture of lawfulness is perceived as the most influential anti-Mafia measure attainable.
Constitutional pluralism has become a principal model for understanding the legal and political structure of the European Union. Yet its variants are highly diverse, ranging from moderate “institutional” forms, closer to constitutionalist thinking, to “radical” ones which renounce a common framework to connect the different layers of law at play. Neil MacCormick, whose work was key for the rise of constitutional pluralism, shifted his approach from radical to institutional pluralism over time. This paper reconstructs the reasons for this shift - mainly concerns about political stability that also underlie many others' skepticism vis‐à‐vis radical pluralist ideas. It then seeks to show why such concerns are likely overdrawn. In the fluid, contested space of postnational politics, a common, overarching frame is problematic as it might inflame, rather than tame, tensions. Leaving fundamental issues open along radical pluralist lines may help to work around points of highly charged contestation and provide opportunities for resistance from less powerful actors.
The effectiveness of the European Convention of Human Rights and of the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights depends on national implementation. This article looks at the implementation of the Convention in Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Norway, Russia, and the United Kingdom. In all of these jurisdictions there has been fundamental change over the last 10-15 years. For the ECHR system to work, the national courts must interact with Strasbourg only in ways which are capable of being universalised and applied also by other European courts. This article inquires into whether national courts have taken on board the imperative of their role and responsibility in a wider European context: a UK exceptionalism will breed a Russian etc. The inquiry concludes that the national jurisprudence implementing the Convention into national law generally has taken this imperative on board.
Over the past fifty years, proportionality analysis (PA) has widely diffused. It is today an overarching principle of constitutional
adjudication, the preferred procedure for managing disputes involving an alleged conflict between two rights claims, or between
a rights provision and a legitimate state or public interest. With the consolidation of the “new constitutionalism,”1 this type of dispute has come to dominate the dockets of constitutional and supreme courts around the world. Although other
modes of rights adjudication were available and could have been chosen and developed, PA emerged as a multi-purpose, best-practice,
standard.
Over the past fifty years, proportionality balancing – an analytical procedure akin to strict scrutiny in the United States – has become a dominant technique of rights adjudication in the world. From German origins, proportionality analysis spread across Europe, into Commonwealth systems (Canada, New Zealand, South Africa), and Israel; it has also migrated to treaty-based regimes, including the European Union, the European Convention on Human Rights, and the World Trade Organization. Part II proposes a theory of why judges are attracted to the procedure, an account that blends strategic and normative elements. Parts III and IV provide a genealogy of proportionality, trace its global diffusion, and evaluate its impact on law and politics in a variety of settings, both national and supranational. In the conclusion, we discuss our major finding, namely, that proportionality constitutes a doctrinal underpinning for the expansion of judicial power globally. Although there is significant variation in how it is used, judges who adopt proportionality position themselves to exercise dominance over policymaking and constitutional development.
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) is the crown jewel of the world’s most advanced international system for protecting civil and political liberties. In recent years, however, the ECHR has become a victim of its own success. The Court now faces a docket crisis of massive proportions, the consequence of the growing number of states subject to its jurisdiction, its favourable public reputation, its expansive interpretations of individual liberties, a distrust of domestic judiciaries in some countries, and entrenched human rights problems in others. In response to this growing backlog of individual complaints, the Council of Europe has, over the last five years, considered numerous proposals to restructure the European human rights regime and redesign the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). This article argues that these proposals should be understood not as ministerial changes in supranational judicial procedure, nor as resolving a debate over whether the ECHR should strive for individual or constitutional justice, but rather as raising more fundamental questions concerning the Court’s future identity. In particular, the article argues for recognition of ‘ embeddedness ’ in national legal systems as a deep structural principle of the ECHR, a principle that functions as a necessary counterpoint to the subsidiary doctrine that has animated the Convention since its founding. Embeddedness does not substitute ECHR rulings for the decisions of national parliaments or domestic courts. Rather, it requires the Council of Europe and the Court to bolster the mechanisms for governments to remedy human rights violations at home, obviating the need for individuals to seek supranational relief and restoring countries to a position in which the ECHR’s deference to national decision-makers is appropriate.
On 4 November 2000 the Council of Europe celebrated the half-centenary of its Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Freedoms. Few would have believed it possible on the day the Convention was signed in Rome by the foreign ministers of its founding member states that by the turn of the century the Convention would have become the most effective and influential international human rights instrument in the world. Over the last twenty-five years especially, the Convention has emerged as ‘a benchmark for the democratic states of Europe ⃛ providing a basis for a European public law’. Few, too, could have dared hope after the horrors of the Second World War and the partition of Europe which immediately followed that by 2000 the scale of the Council of Europe’s activities would have grown to embrace forty-one European member states containing 800 million people, all of whom are guaranteed in law the protection of the fundamental rights and freedoms set out in the Convention.
This book critically appraises the European Convention on Human Rights as it faces some daunting challenges. It argues that the Convention’s core functions have subtly changed, particularly since the ending of the Cold War, and that these are now to articulate an ‘abstract constitutional model’ for the entire continent, and to promote convergence in the operation of public institutions at every level of governance. The implications - from national compliance, to European international relations, including the adjudication of disputes by the European Court of Human Rights - are fully explored. As the first book-length socio-legal examination of the Convention's principal achievements and failures, this study not only blends legal and social science scholarship around the theme of constitutionalization, but also offers a coherent set of policy proposals which both address the current case-management crisis and suggest ways forward neglected by recent reforms.
The European Court of Human Rights has increasingly relied on the "margin of appreciation" as a tool for interpreting the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. The article describes the history and development of this doctrine. It then illustrates why the doctrine endangers the rule of law - and to some degree the protection of human rights - in Europe.
The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) plays a unique and central role in upholding human rights in Europe, but in recent years has experienced a huge increase in its workload. The exponential growth in the number of individual applications has and continue to pose a serious threat for the effectiveness of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) system and it can be argued that it is the biggest challenge the ECtHR has been faced with in its history. Despite the substantial increase in its productivity and its output in general, the caseload continues to rise considerably, putting the effectiveness and credibility of the ECHR system in serious danger. Even with the reform of Protocol No. 11 that the ECtHR went through in 1998, its caseload had continued to rise sharply. The need for a second major reform was stressed only a few years after the drastic reform of 1998. There have been various efforts to make the ECtHR more effective and accessible, which have led to the 2004 "reform package" of measures that address the issue of ECtHR's excessive case-load, including Protocol No. 14 to the ECHR. This article provides analysis and critical evaluation of the ongoing efforts to reform the ECtHR in order to guarantee its long-term effectiveness.
Conditionality has deeply affected European integration, particularly in what concerns EU human rights external policy on the one hand, and the enlargement process on the other hand. This paper affords a picture of the problems which conditionality has raised, not only on legal grounds, but also for the shaping and the understanding of the European identity. Moreover, the paper investigates how recent EU developments, such as the further stages of the enlargement process and the 'Treaty establishing a European Constitution', might change the course of, and might be affected by, conditionality.
The evolution of the European human rights regime is often described as the development of an integrated order with the European Convention of Human Rights as its governing constitutional instrument. It is argued that the regime is better regarded as pluralist - characterised by a heterarchical relationship between its constituent parts that is ultimately defined politically and not legally. The emergence and workings of this pluralist order are traced through the interaction of the European Court of Human Rights with domestic courts in the European Union. These cases not only show conflicts over questions of ultimate supremacy but also significant convergence and harmony in practice. The analysis of the factors leading to this convergence indicates that central characteristics of pluralism incrementalism and the openness of ultimate authority have contributed significantly to the generally smooth evolution of the European human rights regime. This suggests a broader appeal of pluralist models as alternatives to constitutionalism in the construction of postnational authority and law.
This article examines the contribution which the European Court of Human Rights has made to the development of common evidentiary processes across the common law and civil law systems of criminal procedure in Europe. It is argued that the continuing use of terms such as ‘adversarial’ and ‘inquisitorial’ to describe models of criminal proof and procedure has obscured the genuinely transformative nature of the Court's jurisprudence. It is shown that over a number of years the Court has been steadily developing a new model of proof that is better characterised as ‘participatory’ than as ‘adversarial’ or ‘inquisitorial’. Instead of leading towards a convergence of existing ‘adversarial’ and ‘inquisitorial’ models of proof, this is more likely to lead towards a realignment of existing processes of proof which nonetheless allows plenty of scope for diverse application in different institutional and cultural settings.
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