European Court Of Human Rights Rulings Research Articles

Gender Equality Principle: Application in ECtHR’s Practice

The article is devoted to analyzing the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), which concerned the issue of gender equality, distinctive features of the application of a gender equality principle by the ECtHR. Based on a study of ECtHR's rulings, it is noted that the concept of gender equality as one of the objectives of the Council of Europe has been applied by the ECtHR since the early 1990s. The ECtHR's approaches to dealing with gender equality cases are characterized both through the prism of non-discrimination (applying Article 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights in combination with other articles) and through complaints about violations of rights guaranteed by other ECHR articles. The analysis shows that, on the one hand, ECtHR emphasizes that gender equality is considered as one of the critical principles of the ECHR. However, on the other hand, significant difficulty in gender discrimination cases is the Court's possibility to refuse to analyze the case in the context of Article 14th content of the Convention. The possibility of giving the Court to states a vast margin of appreciation in determining domestic policies on gender equality is ambiguously manifested in judicial practice. The conclusion states that the need to ensure gender equality can be considered by the ECtHR as a legitimate aim and can serve as an appropriate basis for interfering with the exercise of certain rights and freedoms enshrined in the Convention.

ECtHR rules on liability of ISPs as a restriction of freedom of speech

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in Strasbourg handed down its first case concerning the liability of intermediaries. A ruling of the Estonian Supreme Court that imposed broad liability and a general monitoring obligation upon an internet news portal vis-a-vis third party comments made on its website under one of the news items was found by the ECtHR to be proportionate and justified interference with the freedom of expression.

The Human Rights Act: Ambiguity about Parliamentary Sovereignty

The Human Rights Act: Ambiguity about Parliamentary Sovereignty

Impact of the ECtHR Rulings on Turkey's Democratization: An Evaluation

Turkey has long retained the record of individual applications before the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). On the other hand, the ECtHR has been playing a crucial role in the democratization of this country, as most of its rulings were followed by substantial reforms. This, however, cannot conceal a dichotomy: although the reforms reflect the political will of the government, the decisions rendered by national courts often indicate the opposite, hampering the democratization process and leaving the country with a judiciary impasse. The reasons and consequences of this phenomenon are analyzed in this essay.

Medically Assisted Procreation and International Human Rights Law

Since the birth of Louise Brown in 1978, the first human baby resulting from in vitro fertilisation (IVF), developments in reproductive medicine have opened up new opportunities to solve problems related to sterility/infertility and to avoid the transmission of serious genetic diseases to offspring. This article evaluates some challenges to human rights protection arising from medically assisted procreation (MAP), with particular reference to artificial insemination from a donor (AID) and preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). It analyses the regulation of MAP at the international, regional and domestic level. Specific attention is paid to two landmark judgments of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) on MAP (S.H. v. Austria and Costa and Pavan v. Italy), with a special focus on the interpretation of the concept of family and private life contained therein and on the effects of the ECtHR rulings on the Italian legal order. It concludes that national legislation concerning MAP should be minimal, i.e. should afford substantial freedom and autonomy to the couples in their procreative choices, in accordance with their right to respect for private and family life.

Informed Decision-Making: The Comparative Endeavours of the Strasbourg Court

The article explores the use of comparative surveys in judgments of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). It argues that the inclusion of a comparative survey serves an informational purpose that may increase the substantive legitimacy of ECtHR rulings. The article aims to provide a broad, however preliminary account of the use of comparative data by focusing on a number of pertinent doctrinal, methodological, and practical issues.

Redesigning the European Court of Human Rights: Embeddedness as a Deep Structural Principle of the European Human Rights Regime

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) is the crown jewel of the world's most advanced international system for protecting civil and political liberties. In recent years, however, the ECtHR 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 ECtHR 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 ECtHR 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 ECtHR's deference to national decision-makers is appropriate.