Tuesday 14 April 2009

New Book on Court's Case Load Burden

As most of the readers of this blog will be very aware, the Court has been and is still struggling with its huge and growing case load of applications. In the chorus of possible solutions a new voice has been added. Ulrike Deutsch and Rüdiger Wolfrum, of the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law (which has one of the best law libraries of Europe, if you ever get the opportunity to visit) in Heidelberg, have compiled a new book at Springer Verlag: The European Court of Human Rights Overwhelmed by Applications: Problems and Possible Solutions. This is a short abstract of the book:

The European Court of Human Rights is faced with an enormous and ever-increasing caseload, which poses a considerable threat to the effectiveness of the protection of the rights guaranteed by the European Convention on Human Rights and its Protocols. Compiling the contributions of distinguished academics and practitioners who are active in the field of European human rights law, this publication is meant as a contribution to the still ongoing discussion on the reform of the control mechanism of the European Court of Human Rights, which is necessary to prevent a failure of the European system of human rights protection.
This small but elegant volume (based on a seminar held in December 2007) contains contributions by big names in the field such as Luzius Wildhaber (former president of the Court), Rudolf Bernhardt, Mark Villiger, and Jochen Frowein. The book thus offers both insiders' and outsiders' views.