Legal assessments of the European Court of Human Rights on the protection of personal data. Their importance for Ukraine

Regional human rights courts like the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR), and the African Court of Human and People's Rights (ACtHPR) have become popular sites of mobilization for victims and activists who seek justice when justice fails at home. Besides being platforms for individual remedy, human rights courts increasingly shape social norms and state policy within countries, making them attractive avenues for rights advocates to develop new norms or to push domestic authorities to reform legislation. The judges of these courts can decide, for example, whether same-sex couples have a right to be married, if prisoners have the right to vote or receive HIV/AIDS treatment, or when a state can deport illegal immigrants to a country where they will likely be tortured. As these courts pass their judgments, they often find themselves in conflict with states that are violating human rights of marginalized groups on a large scale and are unwilling to implement international rulings. Although international human rights courts have become increasingly popular venues among victims and activists who seek justice when justice fails at home, we are only beginning to understand how activists play roles in shaping the development of regional human rights courts' case law—the body of judgments that shapes how judges will make their decisions in the future. We now have plenty of international relations and international legal research on the interactions between states and international courts: how judges in these courts wrestle between deferring to the interests of member state governments whose actions are on trial and sticking closely to the conventions' fundamental yet evolving principles (Alter et al., 2019; Helfer & Voeten, 2014). As some states begin to resist international courts' authority, scholars have begun to examine the dynamics of this backlash (Hillebrecht, 2022; Madsen et al., 2018; Sandholtz et al., 2018). Recent studies have also demonstrated that human rights advocates—whether NGOs or individual lawyers—have a significant impact on shaping the jurisprudence of international courts and the impact judgments have in concrete locations (Kahraman, 2018; Sundstrom, 2014; van der Vet, 2012; Kurban, 2020; Conant, 2018; Harms, 2021; Cichowski, 2016; Hodson, 2011; Haddad, 2018). Meanwhile, these advocates themselves have been subject to repression and stigmatization by governments as part of the backlash phenomenon. Without an adequate understanding of the factors shaping activists' engagement with international courts, we risk undervaluing their strategic impact on the expansion of case law, the human rights protection of marginalized groups who cannot find remedies at home, and the domestic implementation of these judgments in an age of state backlash. In this section, we summarize the three papers contained in this symposium and their original contributions to these themes. Over the last decade, dozens of countries have erected legal barriers or started vilifying campaigns to stymie the work of NGOs (Buyse, 2018; Chaudhry, 2022). One tactic in this toolkit is the enactment of burdensome regulation on NGOs that receive funds from foreign donors as they allegedly promote foreign agendas (Christensen & Weinstein, 2013; Dupuy et al., 2021). States that frequently abuse human rights are especially prone to target NGOs that engage in strategic litigation (Hillebrecht, 2019). Most NGOs depend on foreign funding, and NGOs that litigate international cases fall disproportionately in this category, but do funders affect the selection of cases? In “Foreign Agents or Agents of Justice? Private Foundations, NGO Backlash, and International Human Rights Litigation,” Heidi Haddad and Lisa Sundstrom examine the extent to which Western donors, particularly private foundations, have encouraged NGOs in Europe to litigate at the ECtHR as a human rights advocacy strategy. They examine overall patterns of donor funding and NGO litigation records, and look in more detail at the case of Russian NGOs' foreign funding and litigation records. The analysis is extremely timely, as the Russian government's criminalization of independent civil society actors, especially in the human rights field, and their accusation that foreign funding turns NGOs into “foreign agents” have been crucial elements of the Russian regime's autocratization. This claim has also provided fuel for Russia's disenchantment with the ECtHR in recent years, contributing to the assessment of many observers that Russia's full-scale attack on Ukraine was the last straw in an inevitable collision course leading to its exit from the Council of Europe. Haddad and Sundstrom debunk the idea that foreign donors are pushing NGOs toward strategies of human rights litigation. Instead, they argue, there is more evidence that NGOs themselves promoted the mechanism of international litigation as a strategy that donors later adopted. This article is a poignant reminder of the advocacy tools that Russian human rights activists and citizens have lost as a result of their government's departure from the Council of Europe, including ECtHR jurisdiction. Yet it also provides insight into the likely roles of foreign donors in other country cases where NGOs are using international court litigation as a human rights advocacy strategy, which is often a target of the ire of national governments, as explored in the next article in the symposium. When states attack human rights NGOs within their borders and/or international human rights courts themselves, how does this affect the willingness of those NGOs to take cases to international courts, and the ways in which they do so? De Silva and Plagis ask this question in their article about state backlash against NGOs in the case of Tanzania and the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights. A fascinating empirical question they pose is: does state backlash against NGOs increase NGO litigation at international courts (to contest state repression at those courts and use international mechanisms when domestic ones are not available), roughly in line with Keck and Sikkink's famous “boomerang pattern” (Keck & Sikkink, 1998), or decrease it due to heightened fear and restricted NGO capabilities that state repression creates? Employing a process-tracing analysis of NGOs' involvement in three cases before the African Court at different stages of the Tanzanian government's backlash against the Court, De Silva and Plagis find that “two-level backlash” by states can result in both phenomena, either promoting or deterring NGO legal mobilization at international human rights courts, depending on certain conditions. The three selected cases concerning the death penalty, the rights of persons with albinism, and the rights of pregnant schoolgirls and mothers, which took place at different time periods, demonstrate a number of patterns of state backlash interacting with NGO strategies. The authors find that domestic-level state backlash deterred domestic NGOs from partnering with international NGOs in litigation, but that such backlash, when it repressed domestic political and legal mobilization opportunities, actually encouraged both Tanzanian and international NGOs to turn to the African Court more frequently to seek remedies. International-level backlash in turn only deterred NGOs from international litigation when such backlash consisted of state efforts to restrict NGOs' ability to engage in litigation, and not when the international backlash was in the form of routine noncompliance with African Court rulings. Importantly, the authors find that NGO responses to state backlash were significantly shaped by their degree of legal consciousness and expertise with the rules, proceedings, and workings of the African Court. Those NGOs with less knowledge and experience were more likely to back away from engaging with the Court under the pressure of state backlash. De Silva and Plagis conclude that “NGOs' persistent human rights advocacy in the face of state backlash is a double-edged sword,” in the sense that they may not be deterred by state backlash initially, but there is a danger that their continued determination to engage in international litigation could prompt governments to engage in even more severe forms of backlash, with critical impacts on international courts and already vulnerable human rights defenders. Rights advocates have a growing menu of institutions and courts available to them. How do activists choose at which institution to lodge their cases in a world where legal remedies have diversified, or as some have argued, fragmented (Koskenniemi & Leino, 2002)? In “What Makes an International Institution Work for Labor Activists? Shaping International Law through Strategic Litigation,” Filiz Kahraman goes beyond the tendency of legal mobilization studies to only examine how activists interact with a single court or institution. Instead, Kahraman opens up how rights advocates imagine which institution is most receptive to their claims. Drawing on a comparative interview study of British and Turkish trade union activists and their legal mobilization campaigns at international courts and quasi-judicial institutions like the International Labor Organization (ILO), Kahraman examines how activists first probe and then strategically identify which court or international institution is most susceptible to their primary goals of influencing structural reforms and setting new norms. Through this probing process—or dynamic signaling game between courts and litigants—activists push a court's jurisprudence and case law into new issue areas. For instance, at the ECtHR, Turkish trade unionists challenged domestic courts' ruling that public sector workers did not have the right to establish unions, even though the ECtHR had no established case law on labor rights in 1990s. They won the case, with the ECtHR finding that Turkey violated the right of public sector workers to unionize. These cases not only had an impact within Turkey, but over the next decades, similar cases brought by British unionists would spin off the early precedent set by the Turkish legal mobilization efforts. Kahraman argues that they ultimately pushed the ECtHR to recognize the basic trade union rights as fundamental human rights. Kahraman sheds light on the often hidden strategies behind international litigation. Activists litigate not just for the immediate impact on the current case they work on, but how they envision that all the cases they work on may shape norms and domestic structural reforms further in the future. Whether an institution is perceptive of claims lies in the eye of the beholder. Kahraman finds that besides targeting institutions with high compliance rates, they also take cases to institutions with low rates of compliance, especially “if these institutions have extensive judicial authority to create new international norms.” So, it is not the de jure protection set by an international courts, but rather how activists perceive the juridical responsiveness and judicial authority of courts—or, how judges adopt either an activist approach or restraint in response to incoming cases and how willing states are to implement cases of a court, respectively—that determines why activists select certain courts or quasi-judicial institutions (like the ILO). Kahraman gives us new tools to interpret how activists perceive authority and receptiveness and respond to opportunities. Rather than static external legal remedies, courts and quasi-judicial institutions are opportunity structures that are malleable to the strategic vision of the activist or litigant. The articles in this symposium together reveal a number of key overlapping insights. At the broadest level, they demonstrate that activists' behaviors and strategies influence international courts' jurisprudence, politics within states, and the human rights outcomes of everyday citizens—and these influences have often been hidden in our existing canon of research on international courts. In addition, all of these articles show that, while activists may face challenges in their efforts, often including significant backlash from their home state governments, they also continue to retain significant agency through their creative efforts to develop legal strategies and circumvent state repression. Activists perennially innovate: sparking the ideas that inspire donors who fund them; calculating how to continue their litigation work when government actors threaten them; and taking risks in litigation to push courts to expand how they define human rights. However, along with these uplifting conclusions, there are worrying patterns that demand future research. States are increasingly pushing back against the powers of international courts to bind them to costly measures, and as this symposium has shown, national governments often point to activists as contributors to this “problem” of invasive international human rights standards. A growing body of research has tracked how human rights defenders of all kinds globally are under threat from actors like governments and corporations who disagree with their contentious actions. We need more studies that gather comprehensive data and systematically track these threats, specifically with regard to activists who engage in international human rights litigation. We suspect that such activists are likely disproportionately targeted due to the international visibility of their complaints. We also desperately need research into possible innovative responses to these threats to activists—responses from activists, funders, governments of countries that support human rights, and international courts themselves. Freek van der Vet is a University Researcher at the Erik Castrén Institute of International Law and Human Rights, Faculty of Law, University of Helsinki and the principal investigator of the Toxic Crimes Project. Lisa McIntosh Sundstrom is Professor of Political Science at the University of British Columbia. She is the director of the ActinCourts network at UBC and conducts research on legal mobilization by Russian activists.

Aim: To analyse the challenges of protecting personal medical data in European Union (EU) Member States and other European countries during the implementation of Regulation 2016/679 (General Data Protection Regulation [GDPR]). Materials and Methods: The study is based on an analysis of international and national legal frameworks governing personal medical data protection, focusing on the GDPR, the case law of the European Court of Human Rights (seven relevant judgments), and national data protection legislation. Statistical data from reports of national Data Protection Authorities were analyzed to identify dominant categories of infringements related to unlawful processing, storage, disclosure, and security breaches of medical data. The methodology included a comparative analysis of European Court of Human Rights judgments and an overview of enforcement activities of data protection authorities in 27 EU Member States. Dialectical, hermeneutic, comparative, analytical, and systemic analysis methods were applied. Conclusions: To comply with the GDPR, healthcare institutions must ensure lawful and secure processing of personal medical data: organize internal procedures, appoint a Data Protection Officer, implement technical and organizational measures, obtain informed consent from patients, and guarantee their rights to access and protect such sensitive information. The protection of personal medical data is ensured through a multi-level system that combines the GDPR, the European Court of Human Rights case law, and national institutions. It is essential to develop and implement clear data protection policies that define responsibilities, data handling procedures and incident response. Many countries still have low awareness among medical personnel regarding personal data protection.

In the recent period of Ukrainian history, scholars pay attention to the discussion of the relationship between Ukrainian constitutional law and the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and the place of rulings and decisions of the European Court of Human Rights in the legal system of Ukraine. The analysis of the provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights and current Ukrainian legislation is made in the article. It is made in order to determine the impact of this act of the Council of Europe on the constitutional law of Ukraine. It is noted that the Convention plays an important role in the process of protection of human rights and freedoms in Ukraine and has an impact on the implementation of the rule of law, which relate to individual’s constitutional status. It is noted that the European Convention significantly increases the level of the effectiveness of constitutional human rights legislation. The role of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights in the formation and activity of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine has been determined. The thesis that within the ratio of the Convention and Ukrainian law, the supremacy of the latter within the national legal system does not eliminate the need to comply with international obligations is substantiated in the article. The grounds for restricting human and civil rights and freedoms in accordance with the requirements of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and the constitutional legislation of Ukraine are considered in the article. In order to ensure national security, the restriction of human and civil rights and freedoms in a state of martial law and emergency is analyzed. By introducing martial law and a state of emergency, it is possible to concentrate temporarily all the levers of control over the individual’s status by coercive means within the framework of official power. The conclusion that the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and the case law of the European Court of Human Rights have had a significant impact on the formation and development of human and civil rights and freedoms as basic, value priorities of the constitutional law of Ukraine is substantiated in the article. Key words: constitutional law, sources of law, Council of Europe, Constitution of Ukraine, Constitutional Court of Ukraine, Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, European Court of Human Rights.

The article deals with the ways of regarding the case law of the European Court of Human Rights as a source of criminal procedural law of Ukraine, which is relevant both in terms of the criminal procedure as a science and for the practice of law enforcement. The purpose of the article is to formulate the concept of the case law of the European Court of Human Rights as a source of criminal procedural law of Ukraine. The paper justifies the opinion that the case law of the European Court of Human Rights is developed and based on the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights and the European Commission of Human Rights, regardless of the country in which they were adopted (i. e. has a polyterritorial jurisdiction over states being the participants of the Convention). The article proves that the case law of the European Court of Human Rights is draws upon the decisions made by the European Court of Human Rights and the European Commission of Human Rights regardless of the time of adoption, i. e. it includes the decisions adopted before Ukraine ratified the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. The author points out the appropriateness of classifying decisions that have acquired the status of final as «case law of the European Court of Human Rights». It is also mentioned that there is a need to include final decisions in the case (as the matter of fact), which have a decisive nature and contain a legal position in this case, into the scope of the category «case law of the European Court of Human Rights». Moreover, the article substantiates the necessity to include the decisions adopted by the European Court of Human Rights in full, i. e. not only the set forth legal positions, into the category of «case law of the European Court of Human Rights». Following the results of the study, the case law of the European Court of Human Rights as a source of criminal procedural law of Ukraine is defined as a set of decisions adopted by the European Court of Human Rights and the European Commission of Human Rights, which have entered into force and contain legal policies which either clarify or specify the provisions of the Convention as for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and relate to human and citizen’s rights and freedoms.

The article discusses the impact of the European Convention on Human Rights (‘the Convention’)  and the  case law of the European Court of Human Rights on Estonian law. It gives historical background on the ratification of the Convention and its protocols by Estonia and describes the status of the Convention in the Estonian legal order. It then shows in more detail the impact of the case law of the Strasbourg Court on Estonia’s legislature, executive power, and judiciary and examines the case law pertaining in particular to the historical past, deprivation of liberty, prison conditions, fair trial and length of proceedings, retroactivity, and lack of foreseeability of criminal law, along with the case law on pluralism and civil rights, especially freedom of expression. In addition, the article focuses on the important issue of reopening of a case on national level once the European Court of Human Rights has found a violation and looks at the implementation of judgements of that court by Estonia in general. Additional remarks are made on the Supreme Court of Estonia’s application of the Convention and the case law of the European Court of Human Rights. Finally, the impact of the case law of the Strasbourg Court in relation to Estonia on the general development of precedents with that court is discussed. In conclusion, in relation to the case law of the European Court of Human Rights, it is important to understand that the Court finding a violation of the Convention in respect of Estonia is not so much a condemnation, ‘against’ the country, as a learning opportunity, in a sense, for Estonia’s democracy, rule of law, and human rights protection system. Furthermore, there could well be other difficulties in Estonia that the Court has for various reasons had no opportunity to address. This can be seen in areas wherein the Court has found a violation by another state but wherein a similar problem still exists in Estonia – e.g., in relation to prisoners’ voting rights. It is important to consider a more global picture of the human rights situation. It is unfortunate that in Estonia, especially in the media and for the wider public, little attention is paid still to the case law of the Court with respect to other states.  In general, European law has been well accepted in Estonia, especially the Convention and the case law of the Court. Working from the Estonian examples, one can confirm that the legislature; the executive power, even more so; and, above all, the judiciary of Estonia have recognised well that the Convention is an inseparable part of Estonia’s legal and democratic culture. Estonian courts need to feel that they also are human rights courts, especially in dealing with the facts and Estonian law, domains wherein the Court cannot and should not act as a fourth or first instance. At the same time, the Court should be able to speak not only to the Estonian courts as counterparts but also to the Estonian people. They as well need to understand European human rights law. All in all, Estonia is quite lucky: it does not have particularly worrying human rights problems; not many violations of the Convention are found in respect of Estonia by the Court. Estonian cases have been dealing with more or less the same issues every ordinary democratic country faces, even to a certain extent with problems of a modern, well-advanced society, such as freedom of expression and privacy rights on the Internet. Also the Court has been lucky to have Estonia as an exemplar: a country wherein the Convention system and the Court’s case law have been to a large extent respected and well complied with. But this mutual ‘happiness’, this quite nice two-way street, should not be taken for granted. The Court’s case law is a moving target. It is hoped that all future developments related to the Court will contribute to improvement of the protection of human rights, democracy, and the rule of law all over Europe. Neither Estonia nor any other European country can apply the generally recognised principles by choice ‘in its own way’.  Estonia’s trump in Europe and beyond could be to serve as a model in the protection of human rights. In consideration of its experience, geopolitical location, and size, alongside its investments in education and the historically rooted importance of nurturing intellectual and cultural values, Estonia could be in a very good position to achieve this ambitious goal.&#160

In the article, the author highlights the issue of implementing the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights into the national legal system. It is outlined that the issue of approximation of national legislation, including court decisions, was outlined back in 1991, when Ukraine received the status of an independent state and took the European integration path of the country’s legal development. Since 1998, Ukraine has ratified a number of European conventions, among which it is worth noting: the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, the European Convention on Human Rights. As an impetus for the approximation of European Union law and the implementation of the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine in 2006 adopted the Law of Ukraine «On the Execution of Decisions and Application of the Practice of the European Court of Human Rights». And, although the Romano-Germanic legal system does not provide for case law, at the same time elements of case law are traced in Ukrainian legislation. The author emphasizes in the article that the European Court of Human Rights calls its own practice precedent. In turn, judicial precedent is that the European Court, when resolving a particular case, tends to generally follow the approaches that it used earlier. At the same time, legal practice has shown significant difficulties not only with the correct understanding, but also with the application of both international documents and decisions of the European Court of Human Rights. The application of thе European Court of Human Rights practice should contribute to the formation of unity of judicial practice in the protection of human rights, freedoms and interests. The author also gives his own commentary on the theses put forward by legal scholars on the issue of implementing the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights into Ukrainian legislation and the procedures for approximating European legislation to national legislation. In his study, the author reveals the issue of stagnation in the national legal system not only in resolving individual cases by analogy, but also in fully applying case law. The author also believes that a reasonable consensus is needed between the Constitutional Court of Ukraine and other bodies in the state.

The article presents a legal analysis of the peculiarities of using the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights as a source of law in Ukraine as one of the elements of the Anglo-Saxon law. The scientific article aims to determine the legal grounds for applying the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights as a source of law and, further, to identify exceptional cases of such application which are not directly disclosed by Ukrainian law. In particular, the regulation of the application of the European Court of Human Rights decisions, which were adopted before the ratification of the Convention by Ukraine, as a source of law at this stage. In the context of this issue, extending the principle of retroactive effect of the law to the European Court of Human Rights was also considered. The scientific article also aims to analyse specific issues and law situations in applying the case law of the European Court of Human Rights. The author analysed other case laws in Ukraine, including case laws of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine. The focus is on issues not regulated by the current legislation of Ukraine and the application or “twice application” of the case law of the European Court of Human Rights in the context of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (with protocols) of 04.11.1950 or separately. The author also draws attention to two essential features in the application of the case law of the European Court of Human Rights – the issue of determining the priority of this case over the case law of the national courts of Ukraine and the use of the European Court of Human Rights by the Constitutional Court of Ukraine. Attention is also paid to the provisions of the constitutional procedure of Ukraine. The scientific article is not limited to analysing exclusively normative material enshrined in the current legislation. However, to increase the relevance of this article, the legal positions of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine are also considered. In particular, the author emphasises the peculiarities and possibilities of applying the European Court of Human Rights case law in disputes related to other states in the national law of Ukraine.

The article examines some aspects of realization of the rule of law principle in the case law of the European Court of Human Rights. The author notes that the principle of the rule of law is a fundamental component of international legal acts regulating human rights and fundamental freedoms. It is emphasized that the Constitution of Ukraine proclaims that the principle of the rule of law is recognized and operates in Ukraine, but the concept of the rule of law itself is not fully disclosed in national legislation. The principle of the rule of law is actually the only effective means of ensuring the inviolability of democracy. The separate elements of this principle as its integral parts and mandatory prerequisites through which the European Court of Human Rights reveals the content of the rule of law was considered. The author provides examples of grouping certain requirements of the rule of law in the case law of the European Court of Human Rights. The author notes that there are no unified approaches to understanding the exact meaning of the rule of law principle either in theory or in practice. The author substantiates that the elements of the rule of law in the case law of the European Court of Human Rights are legality, legal certainty, fairness of a trial and priority of human rights. The main element of the rule of law in the case law of the European Court of Human Rights is legality. The requirement of legality has formal (procedural) and substantive aspects (requirements for the quality of the law). It is noted that the requirement to respect human rights and recognize their priority is key in the case law of the European Court of Human Rights. Cases of human rights restrictions must comply with the principle of proportionality. The provisions of the documents of the Venice Commission on the understanding of principle of the rule are analyzed, the activity of the European Court of Human Rights in ensuring the principle of the rule of law in the process of protection of human rights and freedoms is studied. The author concludes that the case law of the European Court of Human Rights is the basis for understanding the essence of the rule of law as a principle. The author emphasizes that the case law of the European Court of Human Rights has a positive impact on the indicators of strengthening the rule of law in the state, and contributes to the improvement of each individual element of this principle and all of them in aggregate.

The article is devoted to the study of such sources of electoral law in Ukraine as the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, the first Protocol to the Convention and the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights. The legal nature of these international sources of suffrage in Ukraine is considered. Attention is drawn to the peculiarities of the wording of the right to free election in Article 3 the first Protocol to the Convention. The peculiarities of the application of the above article by the European Court of Human Rights are disclosed. The importance the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights as a source of suffrage in Ukraine is emphasized. This assertion is justified by the fact that the rules of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and its Protocols are of a general and abstract nature and are interpreted and filled with real meaning in judgments of the European Court of Human Rights, which are of precedent nature. A number of legal positions of the European Court of Human Rights concerning the obligation of the state to organize and hold democratic elections, enshrined in the specific decisions of this international judicial institution, have been analyzed. In the article were covered such legal positions as: the possibility of limiting the suffrage of citizens, provided that such conditions do not interfere with the free expression of the people's opinion on the election of the legislative body; evaluation of the electoral legislation in the light of the political development of the country, taking into account national characteristics; wide discretion of the state in the choice of the electoral system, which will ensure the free expression of the opinion of the people, etc. There are a number of unresolved issues regarding the application of the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights in judicial and administrative practice in Ukraine, one of which is the possible conflict between the case-law of the Court and the rules of Ukrainian law. It is proposed to resolve this conflict at the legislative level. The conclusions focus on the peculiarities of the legal nature of these sources of suffrage in Ukraine. KEY WORDS: sources of suffrage, Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, case-law of the European Court of Human Rights, right to free elections.

The article explores the main problems of the application by the national courts of the case law of the European Court of Human Rights as a source of law. Analyzing the rules of the law and examining the views of the Supreme Court have highlighted the problematic issues of the obligation to apply the case law of the European Court of Human Rights to national courts as a source of law. The researchers' positions on the obligation of national courts to apply the case law of the European Court of Human Rights in cases against other states are examined and the importance of the application of the case law of the European Court of Human Rights is highlighted. Analyzing the views of scholars and experts, we have proposed ways to address the issues of the binding application of the case law of the European Court of Human Rights by reviewing the plenary sessions of high courts. The problems of the application of the case law of the European Court of Human Rights by national courts, such as the selective application of the case law of the Court, references to general principles and interpretations, ignoring the conditions of their application, absolutization of the binding position of the Court, application of the decisions of the Court by analogy, reference to the practice Court in the presence of clear and consistent provisions of national law, etc. The following ways of solving these problems are proposed: 1) revising the concept and content of the Law of Ukraine "On the implementation of decisions and application of the practice of the European Court of Human Rights" and amending the legislation in order to bring it in line with the provisions of the new procedural legislation and modern ideas of theorists and practitioners about the legal nature of decisions The European Court of Human Rights; 2) preparing a resolution of the Plenum of the Supreme Court on the application of the Convention and the case-law of the Court, which should be based on a thorough analysis of the shortcomings and peculiarities of the case-law of the national courts. The problematic issues of the application of the case law of the European Court of Human Rights in the absence of official translations of the Court's decisions are examined. Analyzing the views of scholars and experts, we have proposed ways to solve these problems by creating a single electronic database that will contain official translations of Court decisions in the Ukrainian language that will ensure their accessibility and dissemination.

The Quest for Information Privacy in Africa: A Review Essay

1. Introduction 1.1 Introduce the Problem Right of protection from arbitrary interference with personal and family life is conserved with major multipurpose international law acts in effect at the relevant time in the area of human rights protection: Art. 12 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948, Art. 17 of The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights 1966. This right is also protected at the level of regional international organizations, i.a. Council of Europe. The Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms 1950 is one of key international acts created within the framework of Council of Europe (hereinafter referred to as--the European Convention on Human Rights, European Convention, the Convention). Art. 8 of the Convention (item 1) guarantees everyone the right to respect for private and family life, Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his (the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, 1950). The European Convention established the unique mechanism of human rights and freedoms protection that foremost involves practice of European Court of Human Rights (hereinafter referred to as--ECtHR, the European Court, the Court). According to Overview data of 1959-2014, the European Court rendered 1085 judgments on complaints about violation of Art.8 of the European Convention by State Parties to the Convention from 1959 to 2014. Most violations of Art.8 of the Convention over the specified period (with regard to time necessary for state accession to the Convention) were established against Italy (145 decrees), Russia (131 decrees), Poland (103 decrees). Given this, ECtHR adopted 17754 regulations in total over the specified period, among them 14877 involved at least one infringement of the European Convention (European Court of Human Rights, 2015). The above states that protection of the right to respect for private and family life is significant on the part of Council of Europe member states' citizens and holds a prominent place in ECtHR practice. The research objective is to cover issues regarding opportunities and matters of protection of the right to respect for private and family life with the use of the European Convention monitoring mechanism. It should be mentioned the paper considers the practice of the European Court in the context of protection of private and family life with no regard to respect for home and correspondence that are also guaranteed under Art. 8 of the Convention. Meeting the objective defined statement and solution of the following tasks: to examine the notion of private and family life in the European court practice, to research European court's legal views concerning understanding of admissibility criteria of interference to the right to respect for private and family life, to study ecological rights protection in the context of Art. 8 of the Convention. In the course of paper preparation scientists' works dedicated both to universal mechanisms of international law protection of human rights and human rights protection under the European Convention in general as well as rights to respect for private and family life in particular were studied. Findings of the research develop and complement international and European law sections dedicated to human rights protection. They can be used in different kinds of legal practice, in academic activity when teaching various branches of jurisprudence. 1.2 Importance of the Problem Modern legal science pays much attention to human rights protection, but there are few complex researches devoted to protection of the right to respect for private and family life in European Court of Human Rights. Recently a research dedicated to the right to respect for private and family life and inviolability of home and correspondence has been undertaken (as exemplified by European Court of Human Rights practice) in Russian legal science (Gracheva, 2013). …

The article has been devoted to the analysis of the nature of the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights as a source of constitutional law of Ukraine. The nature of the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights has been characterized depending on the following factors: state legal system, constitutional approach to the relation between national and international law, the level of bindingness of decisions of the European Court of Human Rights for public authorities. The author has concluded on the duality of nature the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights, namely that, the author considers that the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights have a complicated, complex structure, combining the properties of both a right-interpreting act and a judicial precedent. According to the author, the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights are intended not only to resolve the cases under trial, but also to specify and interpret the rules of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. It has been established that the current Ukrainian legislation, establishing the primacy of the rule of law before the law, provides for the obligation of the judicial authorities to apply the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights as a source of law and at the same time the duty of the state to enforce the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights in cases where Ukraine is the defendant. In addition, as the case law of the European Court of Human Rights shows, the judiciary itself emphasizes in its decisions the interpretative nature and the binding nature of all its decisions to be taken into account by all States parties. The Constitutional Court of Ukraine constantly uses the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights to form its own legal positions, after which they actually become a substantive element of the motivating part of the decision of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine. It has been concluded that regardless of whether or not the decision of the European Court of Human Rights has been ruled on Ukraine, it is a source of constitutional law in Ukraine.

Interpreting the 21st century, in which we live, from the perspective of world civilization, scientific literature describes it as a period of transition from one socio-cultural paradigm to another. Against this backdrop, personal data and its protection are becoming an important issue. An analysis of international acts shows that at present the main act regulating issues of personal data protection is the General Data Protection Regulation. It is no secret that today's increasingly widespread use of technology in many areas of everyday life and various professional activities creates the basis for the easy collection of personal data and expands the possibilities for its use in ways that undermine individual rights. For this reason, the protection of personal data has become an important element of human rights and freedoms and constitutional control of countries. Thus, the article examines the importance of constitutional supervision in the protection of both human rights and personal data. Keywords: constitutional review, personal data, constitutional review of countries, international law, constitutional justice, judicial constitutional review, protection of personal data, human rights and freedoms, primary judicial constitutional review.

The article is devoted to the study of the nature of judgments of the European Court of Human Rights and their significance as a source of law in the context of Ukraine. The case law of the European Court of Human Rights establishes new rules and regulations that may differ from and supplement national civil regulations. This case law, as well as the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, is considered an important source of civil law and is binding on national legal systems. As a result, it becomes an integral part of national civil law, or, more precisely, its "living organism". The activities of the European Court reflect not only the European legal experience, but also influence the very evolution of the legislation of the countries party to the Convention. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of how the case law of the European Court is embodied and used in the national legislation of Ukraine and how other legal scholars perceive this influence. The legal specificity of the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights attracts the attention of many legal scholars. All this is due to its unique role as a supranational jurisdictional body with the exclusive right to interpret and apply the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, as well as the specifics of the legal systems of the Council of Europe member states, where the law combines both continental and Anglo-American types of legal systems. Taking into account the special status of the European Court of Human Rights, there are discussions in the national legal science on the interaction between national legislation and the Court’s precedents, with a special emphasis on determining their legal nature. An important issue is the possibility of considering the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights as precedents and the possibility of implementing case law in Ukraine.