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Judicial Ethics
Article 21 ECHR provides that the Court’s judges shall be of high moral character, qualified, impartial and independent. These criteria have been further specified in the Rules of Court. Apparently, this was not sufficient – or at least not sufficiently known to…
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Separate, But Still Equal
After the Czech Republic and Greece, it was Croatia’s turn last week to be faced with a complaint of unequal treatment of Roma in schools. In the case of Orsus and others v. Croatia, the European Court of Human Rights addressed the…
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Hate Speech Case
Restricting hate speech is often a contentious point from the perspective of human rights. Last week, the Court issued a judgment on such speech in the French case of Soulas and others. Soulas was the publisher of a book written by Guillaume…
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New Articles on ECHR
There are two recent articles I would like to draw your attention to. The first is: Edouard Dubout, ‘Interprétation téléologique et politique jurisprudentielle de la Cour européenne des droits de l’homme’, which has appeared in the latest issue of the Revue Trimetrielle…
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Shipping News
On 10 July the Court issued a judgment in the case of Medvedyev and others v. France on the length of legal detention under exceptional circumstances. The case related to the apprehension of the Winner, a cargo ship, by the French authorities…
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Ballot Box Judgments
Voting is not just a contentious issue in Zimbabwe, as several European Court judgments of this week show. The Grand Chamber ruled on Tuesday in the case of Yumak & Sadak v. Turkey that a 10% threshold for parliamentary elections did not…
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Red Star Judgment
The symbol of the red star was at the core of a dispute on which the European Court of Human Rights decided yesterday. In its judgment in the case of Vajnai v. Hungary it found a violation of the freedom of expression…
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Keeping Track of Disappearances
Last week, the European Court handed down judgments in three new disappearance cases, finding amongst others violations of the right to life: Ruslan Umarov v. Russia, Musayeva v. Russia, and Akhiyadova v. Russia. I have earlier commented that the stream of this…
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What’s in a Name (Again)?
“Names are central elements of self-identification and self-definition.” That is what the Court held in last week’s judgment in the case of Daróczy v. Hungary. The case concerned a widow who was forced to change her name. When she married, in 1950,…
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Eavesdropping confined
Yesterday, the European Court of Human Rights gave an important ruling on the legality of intercepting telephone and email communications in Liberty and others v. the United Kingdom. The applicants, three NGOs from the United Kingdom and Ireland complained about the interception…
