Latest posts
Manifestly ill-founded … by a majority
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In this post I want to flag three inadmissibility decisions, delivered by the Court’s Chambers over the past few months, in which the applicant’s claims are declared manifestly ill-founded, by a majority. Like so many inadmissibility deci...
N.K.M. v. Hungary: Heavy Tax Burden Makes Strasbourg Step In
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This guest post was written by Ingrid Leijten, Ph.D. researcher and teaching assistant at the Leiden University Faculty of Law, Department of Constitutional and Administrative Law. The debate on the future of the European Court of Human Rights is oft...
The Court could provide more guidance in prisoner cases
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When systematically reading the Court’s case-law, it becomes clear that poor conditions of detention remain one of the most dramatic human rights problems in contemporary Europe. The last decade, the Court has done a good job in interpreting Ar...
Mehmet Şentürk and Bekir Şentürk v. Turkey: The Court could have shown more empathy
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Fellow observers of the Strasbourg case law will probably agree with me: when you systematically go through the Court’s case law you’re confronted with the most extraordinary facts that you would never have imagined. Horrible prison circu...
New Publication: “Doing Minority Justice Through Procedural Fairness: Face Veil Bans in Europe”
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Eva Brems and I are happy to announce the publication of our article entitled “Doing Minority Justice Through Procedural Fairness: Face Veil Bans in Europe” in the Journal of Muslims in Europe. In this article we examine the bans on face...
ECtHR Really Applies Less Restrictive Alternative: Saint-Paul Luxembourg S.A. v. Luxembourg
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The structured proportionality test put forward by Robert Alexy and his followers subjects limitations of fundamental rights to a three-pronged test. The test is intended to examine – step by step – a measure’s (i) suitability, (ii)...
Ban on Political Advertising Does Not Violate Article 10: Animal Defenders International v. UK
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This guest post was written by Ronan Ó Fathaigh* On Monday, the Grand Chamber of the European Court held, by nine votes to eight, that the UK’s ban on political advertising on television did not violate Article 10. The majority opinion i...
Equal treatment for remand and convicted prisoners: Gülay Çetin v. Turkey
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This guest post was written by Cedric De Koker, academic assistant at the Institute for International Research on Criminal Policy (IRCP), Ghent University. With its judgment in the case of Gülay Çetin v. Turkey, the European Court of Huma...
Söderman v. Sweden: third party intervention of our Human Rights Centre
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We were in Strasbourg yesterday to attend the Grand Chamber hearing in the case of Söderman v. Sweden. In this case, formerly known as E.S. v. Sweden, the Human Rights Centre of Ghent University has submitted a third party intervention. We...
Forthcoming Publication on Vulnerable Groups in the Court’s Case Law
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This post was written by Alexandra Timmer and Lourdes Peroni Alexandra and I are happy to announce the forthcoming publication of our joint Article “Vulnerable Groups: The Promise of an Emerging Concept in European Human Rights Convention Law.&...
X. and Others v. Austria (Part II): A Narrow Ruling on a Narrow Issue
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In this second post on the Grand Chamber judgment in X. and Others v. Austria, I will focus on the narrowness of it all: the narrowness of the issue before the Court, the narrowness of the ruling and the narrow approach the majority took to the Europ...
X. and Others v. Austria (Part I): Had the Woman Been a Man…
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This guest post – the first in a two-post series on X. and Others v. Austria – was written by Grégor Puppinck* On the 19th of February, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights published its ruling in the case of X a...
“Very Weighty Reasons” for Religion: Vojnity v. Hungary
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It looks like freedom-of-religion season has arrived in Strasbourg. After leaving aside the “freedom to resign” doctrine in Eweida, the Court has just made another move towards greater recognition of the importance of freedom of religion.
Non-nationals, living conditions and disability: Situating S.H.H. v. United Kingdom within Strasbourg’s Article 3 case-law
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This guest post was written by Elaine Webster. Elaine holds a PhD from the University of Edinburgh and is currently a lecturer and director of the Centre for the Study of Human Rights Law at the University of Strathclyde. In S.H.H. v. United Ki...
Freedom of Religion in Public Schools: Strasbourg Court v. UN Human Rights Committee
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In a recent decision, the Human Rights Committee of the UN found a violation of the right to freedom of religion in a case concerning the famous and highly debated French law of 2004 that prohibits the wearing of religious garment in public schools.
Procedural Justice in Human Rights Adjudication: The European Court of Human Rights
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In the context of the project “Strengthening the European Court of Human Rights: More Accountability through Better Legal Reasoning”, Eva Brems and I have written an article in which we explore the relevance of the socio-psychological con...
Horváth and Kiss v. Hungary: a strong new Roma school segregation case
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The Strasbourg Court has once more delivered a judgment in a Roma school segregation case. The applicants in Horváth and Kiss v. Hungary are two young Roma men, who were diagnosed as having mild mental disabilities when they were children. As...
Poll on the Best and Worst ECtHR Judgment of 2012: the ‘Winners’
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Now that our poll on the best and worst ECtHR judgments of 2012 has been running for a couple of weeks, we considered it a good moment to formally announce the results of the voting, as of now. We curiously noted that visitors were much more likely t...
Eweida, Part II: The Margin of Appreciation Defeats and Silences All
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In this second post on Eweida and Others v. the United Kingdom, I deal with the conflict between freedom of religion (or the prohibition of indirect discrimination on the basis of religion, if you so wish) and the prohibition of discrimination on the...
Eweida and Others v. the United Kingdom (Part I): Taking Freedom of Religion More Seriously
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Eweida and Others v. the United Kingdom is probably one of the most awaited freedom of religion judgments of recent times. Twelve third parties intervened in the case. The judgment in fact covers four big cases brought by Christian applicants, compla...
