The Jurisdiction Criterion in Article 1 of the echr and a Territorial State

Abstract

The article addresses the question of jurisdiction criterion introduced in article 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights in respect to a territorial State. It is inspired by a relatively fresh judgment of the European Court of Human Rights in the Sargsyan v. Azerbaijan case – one of the two cases arisen out of conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh, which were simultaneously decided in Strasbourg. The article’s aim is twofold. First, it reconstructs and discusses the methods applied by the Court in the sub judice case in question of territorial application of the echr and potential exemptions. Second, it searches for some general conclusions concerning the jurisdiction criterion in the Convention system. This is dictated by a conviction about usefulness of inclusion to a greater extent a perspective of territorial application of the echr into a debate over the jurisdiction concept, most frequently contextualised by its extraterritorial dimension.