The Influence of the Human Rights Convention on Austrian Law

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms on the Austrian legal system. This subject awakened great interest among theorists from the moment when the Convention was ratified, and was exhaustively discussed in legal literature.' From this discussion, there emerged with greatest prominence certain questions raised by the reception of an international treaty into the internal law of a State. These questions include the place of the Convention in the domestic hierarchy of legal norms; whether the provisions of the Convention are self-executing; and, finally, what are the obligations that a State incurs by reason of the Convention. For several years much less attention was paid to the more practical problems of how the Convention affects the application of Austrian legal norms.2 But now, after ten years of experience under the Convention, it is time to draw up a balance, and measure the influence of the Convention. The focal point of such an accounting must be the applica-