Australia's Growing Debt to the European Court of Human Rights

Abstract

An interesting recent development in judicial reasoning in Australia has been the growing recourse by judges to decisions and reasons of the European Court of Human Rights. The author points to the use of a decision of that court by the High Court of Australia in the prisoners' voting rights case of 2007: Roach v Electoral Commissioner. He then examines the citation of reasons of the European Court of Human Rights in Australia from early days in the 'free speech' cases up to the present time. The citations have ranged from cases on the right to fair trial, migration law, family law and a range of other topics. With the enactment of human rights statutes in Australia, this use by Australian courts of decisions of the European Court of Human Rights is bound to expand.