Webinar: "The Road to Reykjavik: Post Summit Reflections"

On 26 June between 12:00-14:00 CET, SWPS University, Riga Graduate School of Law and the University of Cologne are organizing a webinar entitled ''The Road to Reykjavik: Post Summit Reflections''. This webinar is the fourth and last of a series of webinars discussing some pressing issues facing the Council of Europe. During this last webinar, the Reykjavik Summit will be reviewed and the panelists will reflect on the future functioning of the Council of Europe. 

You can register here. 

New Issue ECHR Law Review

The second issue of the year of the ECHR Law Review has just been published (Vol. 4, issue 2). The issue contains one editorial, one guest editorial, two research articles and two book reviews. The contributions discuss such topics as immunities barring prosecutions of the crime of aggression, the predominance test under Article 18 ECHR and the role of common values in the jurisprudence of the Court, to name a few. This is the table of contents:

* Vassilis P Tzevelekos, 'Immunities Barring the Prosecution of the Crime of Aggression Against Ukraine: The Contribution of the ECtHR Case Law'

* Rosanne van Alebeek, Larissa van den Herik and Cedric Ryngaert, 'Prosecuting Russian Officials for the Crime of Aggression: What About Immunities?'

* Tobias Mortier, 'Reprehensible or Legitimate Aims? A Proposal for a New Approach to Article 18 ECHR in Light of its Predominance Test'

* Carl Emilio Lewis, 'The European Court of Human Rights and its Search for Common Values'

* Brice Dickson, 'Dilek Kurban, Limits of Supranational Justice: The European Court of Human Rights and Turkey's Kurdish Conflict'

* Leto Cariolou, 'Robert Spano, Iulia Motoc, Branko Lubarda, Paulo Pinto de Albuquerque, Marialena Tsirli (eds), and Aikaterini Lazana (assistant), Fair Trial: Regional and International Perspectives / Procès équitable: perspectives régionales et internationales, Liber Amicorum Linos-Alexandre Sicilianos'

Call for Papers on Defending Judicial Independence

The ELTE Institute of Political and International Studies (Hungary) and CNR Institute for International Legal Studies (Italy) have launched a joint call for papers. Together, they are organising a conference entitled 'Empowering Domestic Judiciaries: The Role of European Actors in Defending Judicial Independence.' The conference, with both ECHR and EU dimensions, will take place in Budapest on 12 and 13 October 2023. This is what the conference is about:

'The conference aims to discuss the role of European actors in promoting judicial independence across Europe. The conference focuses on formal and informal instruments used at the European level to help domestic judiciaries resist political pressure and autocratic tendencies undermining the rule of law and the independence of the judiciary. There has long been a lively debate about the use of European and international law in protecting the rule of law at the national level, and these debates regularly revolve around the developments in the relevant jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). Besides these formal practices, the organizers of the conference are particularly interested in the role of informal or soft instruments (such as the work of judicial networks, transnational associations, advisory bodies or academies) in empowering and mobilising domestic judiciaries to stand for their independence. What have these actors done so far? How do they help European courts (CJEU and ECtHR) to address the challenges to judicial independence adequately? And what more can they do to help judiciaries under attack by their governments? Furthermore, we also seek to reveal how transnational and national actors can work together to promote the independence of judges. The conference's main goal is to provide tools for domestic judiciaries to stand for their independence effectively and combat the full-blown politicisation of their profession.

The conference concentrates on judiciaries in Southern Europe and Central and Eastern Europe. Courts from these regions have been facing increasing challenges regarding their independence, and the organisation of these judiciaries show some common patterns which suggest that they can learn from each other. We seek to deliberate on both formal and informal practices available for promoting the resistance of domestic judiciaries and to evaluate their effectiveness in fighting for judicial independence at the national level. As we focus on judiciaries in Southern Europe and the CEE region, we are also interested in how an essentially apolitical, career judiciary can tackle the problem of politicisation.'

To apply, those interested can submit an abstract of no more than 500 words and a short CV with the most relevant publications by 31 July 2023. All information on the conference, including keynote speakers, themes and more, can be found here.

Launch of the EIN-DRI Rule of Law Report 2023

On Monday 3 July 2023 between 16:00-17:30 CET, the European Implementation Network (EIN) and Democracy Reporting International (DRI) are organizing an online launch of the 2023 report on the non-implementation of regional courts' judgments. The event will start with a presentation of the report's findings and recommendations, after which a panel discussion will follow discussing how the EU and the Council of Europe can cooperate better on enforcing the implementation of the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the EU.

Here is some information about the report:

''The attacks on fundamental European values in the past years have continued to raise concern for European stakeholders, from governments to media and citizens alike. The European Union (EU) has introduced a series of policy measures designed to halt and reverse this phenomenon, ranging from the new annual rule of law review cycle to targeted measures, such as withholding structural funds from countries with severe infringements of the rule of law.  

In 2022, following civil society calls for the EU’s rule of law reporting to take into account the non-implementation of judgments from the two key European courts - the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU)  - the EU Commission has included this type of data from the ECtHR in its annual rule of law report. This development allowed the EU to capture longer-term problems with the rule of law across all Member States, which had previously been overlooked. Find our report from last year here.

This report reflects the fact that the non-implementation of judgments of the European Courts continues to be a systemic problem. Some 40% of the leading judgments of the European Court of Human Rights relating to EU states from the last ten years have not been implemented. Each of these judgments relates to a significant or structural problem in the laws or practices of states, often with direct consequences for many citizens. Incidental cases of non-compliance with CJEU judgments have been a long-standing fixture of the European Union, with Member States occasionally being unwilling or unable to adequately put the rulings of the court in practice. Since 2020, an increasingly dangerous trend of a direct challenge to the authority of the court by Member States has emerged.''

You can register here. 

Call for Papers for the European Human Rights Law Conference 2023

From 28-29 September 2023, the 2023 European Human Rights Law Conference is being held at the University of Cambridge, Faculty of Law. The theme of the conference is 'Human Rights: Prospects, Possibilities, Fears and Limitations'. Keynotes include Judge Paulo Pinto de Albuquerque, Professor Conor Gearty KC, Dr Elaine Webster and Lady Brenda Hale.

Here is a description of the call:

'Abstracts are invited from those at any career stage, and we welcome papers from academics, practitioners and those working for Non-Governmental Organisations as well as others. Abstracts should be no longer than 500 words and can address any aspect of the conference theme. Papers will be selected on the basis of merit and fit with the conference theme.

The deadline for the call for papers is 7 July 2023.

Please note that speakers will have to meet their own expenses and pay the conference fee. A limited number of fee-waivers may be available and will be considered on a case-by-case basis.

Proposed sessions and themes for the conference include:

General

- The role of courts in human rights adjudication

- The strengths and weaknesses of written rights documents

- The future of the ECtHR, the ECHR and the European Social Charter

- The utility of the international rights framework

- Critiques of human rights

- Backsliding on rights in domestic systems and in the international rights framework

Specific rights issues

- Climate change and human rights litigation

- Reproductive rights

- Technology, Artificial Intelligence and human rights

- Migrants' rights

- LGBTQI+ rights

- Race, ethnicity and rights

- Health and rights

- Animal and environmental rights

- Domestic abuse and rights

- Workers' rights

Jonathan Cooper OBE Early Career Prize

The Jonathan Cooper OBE Prize for the best paper by an early career scholar or professional will be awarded at the 2023 conference dinner. Those who are eligible and wish to be considered for the Prize should indicate this by ticking the relevant box in the electronic application system and by submitting a full written version of their paper by 15 September 2023. The paper must be unpublished and not under consideration for publication (unless it is under consideration with the European Human Rights Law Review) at the time of submission. The Prize will be awarded on the basis of the written paper submitted. The prize-winning paper will be published in European Human Rights Law Review and will receive a monetary prize.

The eligibility criteria are as follows:

Anyone who:

a. is studying for, but who has not yet been awarded, a doctoral degree in Law; or

b. was awarded a doctoral degree in Law on or after 1 September 2018; or

c. was appointed to their first full-time academic or professional position on or after 1 September 2018.

Career breaks and caring commitments, and the impact of Covid-19 will be taken into account in determining eligibility

Publication

A small selection of the papers presented at the conference as well as keynote presentations may be published in a special issue of the European Human Rights Law Review.'

Conference on the EU's Accession to the ECHR

On 14 and 15 July, the University of Liverpool is organizing a conference on the European Union's accession to the European Convention on Human Rights. The conference will discuss the proposed accession agreement and its implications for both the EU and the ECHR.

Here is a description of the event:

''As the latest negotiations on EU accession to the ECHR inch closer to a successful conclusion, this conference will explore the proposed accession agreement as well as the future opportunities and challenges facing both the EU and the ECHR legal orders.

Our first panel will analyse the framework for accession. Will the new accession agreement do enough to satisfy the CJEU that the autonomy and special characteristics of EU law are respected? What particular problems are likely to arise for the EU institutions, e.g. when it comes to determining the allocation of responsibility also with the Member States? And what might accession mean for the ECHR itself, particularly during a period of significant geopolitical change across Europe – from Brexit to the war in Ukraine? Our second panel will consider certain cross-cutting themes in EU and ECHR law – not only the future of the existing Bosphorous doctrine on liability for EU acts that infringe the Convention, or the particular difficulties involved in ensuring the proper scrutiny of territorially and institutionally fragmented executive power; but also major doctrinal practices where the two systems adopt approaches that deserve to be compared and contrasted, e.g. when it comes to defining and assessing the “margin of appreciation”, or the application of European fundamental rights standards to autonomous private action. Our final panel offers more detailed case-studies of how EU law and ECHR law might converge or diverge in their treatment of major socio-economic challenges, as well as the potential to engage in processes of mutual learning that enrich the legal heritage of European fundamental rights, e.g. in fields such as data protection, or migration, plus the “rule of law” crisis in states such as Poland and Hungary.

Attendance at the conference can be either in-person or online via Zoom. Either option is free, but each requires registration. Please note: there is an upper limit on the number of in-person participants we can accommodate, so please only register to attend in-person if you are firmly committed to visiting us in Liverpool!''

Book Launch: Law of the European Convention on Human Rights (5th ed)

On Wednesday 14 June 2023, the Human Rights Law Centre (HRLC) of the University of Nottingham is hosting a book launch for the fifth edition of the textbook 'Law of the European Convention on Human Rights', co-authored by David Harris (Emeritus Professor at the University of Nottingham), Michael O'Boyle (Former Deputy Registrar at the European Court of Human Rights), Ed Bates (Associate Professor at the University of Leicester) and Carla M. Buckley (International Human Rights Lawyer). 

Here is a short description of the event:

''The Human Rights Law Centre (HRLC) will be hosting the launch of the latest edition of 'Law of the European Convention on Human Rights', published with OUP. This event will take place from 2 to 4pm UK time (BST) in the University of Nottingham's Monica Partridge Building (Room C14) and online via MS Teams on Wednesday 14 June 2023.

To celebrate the launch of the new edition of this seminal text, the HRLC will be joined by Zoë Bryanston-Cross (Registry, Council of Europe) and Krešimir Kamber (Registry, Council of Europe) to discuss the evolution of the European Convention on Human Rights and its impact on human rights law in Europe and beyond. The discussion will also delve into the challenges facing the European Court of Human Rights.

The event will be chaired by Sangeeta Shah, Professor of International Law and Human Rights and HRLC Co-Director.

The first edition of Law of the European Convention on Human Rights was co-authored by Emeritus Professor David Harris, Mr Michael O’Boyle and Professor Colin Warbrick and published in 1995. It quickly gained recognition as the authoritative text in the area. This new fifth edition – published 28 years later - provides a fully updated, rigorous and comprehensive analysis of the work of the European Court of Human Rights and the rights protected by the ECHR.

The latest edition is co-authored by former HRLC Co-director and Founder, Emeritus Professor David Harris, Mr Michael O’Boyle (former Deputy Registrar of the European Court of Human Rights), Dr Ed Bates (University of Leicester) and Ms Carla M Buckley (International Human Rights Lawyer). They were joined by Krešimer Kamber, Zoë Bryanston-Cross, Peter Cumper and Heather Green.

Whether attending in person or online, this is a great opportunity to learn from some of the leading experts in the field of human rights law and to celebrate the launch of this important new edition.''

You can register here. 

Lecture on Media Pluralism under the ECHR

On Wednesday 31 May the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights of the University of Oxford is organizing the Eric Barendt Annual Media Law lecture entitled 'The Concept of Media Pluralism under the European Convention on Human Rights - Substantive Principles and Procedural Safeguards'. The lecture will be delivered by former ECtHR president Robert Spano.

Here is a short description of the lecture:

''European systems have long had rules in place to secure pluralism in media ownership and to ensure that audiences are exposed to diverse content.  The role of those regulations has come under increased scrutiny in recent years, as a result of political polarization and access to international media sources. In NIT Srl v Republic of Moldova (2022), the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights considered the compatibility of rules requiring political impartiality and neutrality in broadcast media coverage with Article 10. In its decision, the Court considered the balance to be struck between two important components of media freedom: pluralism in media content and editorial freedom. Taking this decision as a starting point and drawing on his time as President of the Court, Professor Spano will examine the evolving Article 10 jurisprudence and the role of the ECHR in promoting media pluralism.''

You can register here to follow the lecture online. 

15 Years ECHR Blog!

A walk with a friend through Brussels in 2008. That is when the idea for the ECHR Blog first started to bubble in my mind. Today this blog with this post (no 1281!) marks exactly its 15th anniversary since its first post on 26 May 2008. 

15 years ago, academic blogs were still a very new phenomenon. Law-related blogs barely existed. The friend (and wise scholar) with whom I wandered through Brussels, Jacco Bomhoff, had created one of the first ones in English in Europe, on comparative law. His enthusiasm for blogging and my own quirky predilection of being an amateur editor and lover of a graphic design (ever since my days as a highschool journal editor) and our walking conversation on how nice it would be to have a blog on European human rights propelled me into action once I returned home to Utrecht. So thank you, Jacco, for proving once again that the best ideas are developed while walking and in conversation with others. Artistotle's peripatetic method is still going strong!

Pracademics

Since its creation in 2008, the ECHR Blog has tried to chart new waters by being a combination of news on judgments and decisions of the Court, wider developments around the Court and Council of Europe and academic publication and events on ECHR-related topics. It thus in effect has aimed at two audiences: both practitioners and academics, including so-called 'pracademics' as one could describe many of us in the human rights community. It is now of course far from the only one doing so - the blogosphere has become much more crowded, with later created fantastic colleagues like EJILTalk! and Strasbourg Observers to name just two English-language ones who publish on the ECHR. From very special and small niche blogs on micro-topics within law to broad, newspaper-type blogs like the prolific Verfassungsblog. And of course, blogs are now just one among many outlets through which academics find and publish information beyond the traditional means - from Twitter and Mastodon to podcasting or even making animations (see one example of mine here) about one's research. Undoubtedly, soon AI will further new ways, welcome or not, of spreading and (re-) creating academic knowledge, also posing new challenges to what curated (academic) content entails.

Obviously, the usage of blog posts has also greatly developed. Initially considered only for mere quick thought experiments and seen as a quirky outlet for academics, blog posts are now fully accepted references in academic work (sometimes too easily so in student work without going to more fundamental primary sources). Like other forms of publications, the curated way of posting, including (fast track) review processes, in diverging degrees of quality, is crucial for the reliability of blogs. The subject-matter expertise of the small team running this blog as well as the knowledge of the people who submit posts helps to keep up the quality standard (although no doubt we too may have had glitches in precision at times).

It's teamwork, stupid!

On countless occasions, I have been asked how many people were working on the blog behind the scenes and my answer for the first twelve years - no one else, just me - was met with incredulity in the eyes of the person asking the question. Yet, the question was pertinent and in hindsight I do not always understand how I kept it running for so long on my own - it was indeed too fragile. I am thus indeed very happy that in the last few years, the blog has become teamwork within its home base, our Netherlands Institute of Human Rights (SIM). In 2020 fellow ECHR specialist (and the academic who personifies kindness in the workplace for that) Kushtrim Istrefi joined me in running the blog and has greatly helped to modernise it, including its new look since that time. And in 2020 our team was further strengthened with the addition of the great Matilda Radoš as assistant editor. And behind the screens subsequent SIM student assistants, currently the wonderful Annida Aqiila Putri, have helped to collect ECHR publications. The teamwork has obviously greatly improved the sustainability of the blog, led to renewal and enables it to post much more regularly. A huge thanks to all of you! 

Still, the blog has been running on our own enthusiasm and over-hours with no single dime of funding ever, reflecting in that sense a true labour of love (although this raises other tough discussions on academic overstretch obviously!) and helping us to maintain our independence. And we, as editors, very much feel that love and interest in the blog being reciprocated. Like any medium a blog is nothing without its readers.

And there is also the direct community of fellow academic bloggers, social media users and journalists writing about human rights. I use community here on purpose as this blog functions not only in the standard networked way. This function has been very important in itself. Without the kind mutual linking of fellow blogs at the outset no one would have found out about this blog. And without the attentive friends - from fellow academics pointing us to workshops, conferences and publications or submitting very welcome guest posts to lawyers, civil servants, and even judges who provide us with input - this blog would be nowhere. 

Nowadays, social media are almost a staple way for academics to self-promote their research and expertise. This can at worst lead to fragmentation of outlets, an emphasis on the individual rather than the collective and even have a narcist edge. But at best it forges new connections. How happily amazed I was when I met ECHR experts from Japan at an academic conference in Germany who told me they had found out about the event because of my blog. And my post on the Court's landmark Rantsev judgment led to a front page article on human trafficking in one of the major Dutch national newspapers. 

But much more importantly, the blog has aimed to offer a platform for insights and publications from both new and established names, getting their writings out in much faster ways than books or journals would (and promoting the latter two once they are published). It thus indirectly has helped to forge connections with people with the same interests ('Aha, another crazy aficionado for the procedural aspects of Article 2!'). Also in that sense, it has hopefully helped to contribute to an ever-growing international Republic of Letters of scholars and students interested in the ECHR and human rights more widely.

Living instrument

Looking back to 15 years of ECHR blogging, I am happy to see it could reach so many readers. An anniversary milestone cannot do without some statistics and here they are: 1281 posts to date (this one included) and a staggering 3,362,367 pageviews. Our readers obviously come mostly from Europe, but also from far beyond it. When I looked up the geographical location of our readers, virtually every country in the world was included, even places where human rights information is censored or blocked online. This also means that students who otherwise have little means of accessing knowledge on human rights in any affordable way have at least a small portal to information about the ECHR and its Court.

In terms of what gets read, the idea from the outset of the blog, a platform of use for both academics and practitioners, is reflected in our most read posts. In the top five since the blog's creation there are two commentaries on judgments (on copyright versus freedom of expression and on the Women on Waves judgment), two posts on very practical matters (an admissibility criteria checklist and a post on states with structural or systemic problems) and - not a surprise - a commentary on the Covid-19 pandemic and the ECHR. Two of these five are guest posts, including the most read one - showing how much this blog grows on the fertile ground of expertise and input from beyond the core team.

May this blog remain, as I wrote in its first post, a living instrument which feeds into the needs and curiosities of its readers. All contributions and suggestions of you, our readers, remain very welcome. On to the next 15 years!

Antoine Buyse, founder of the ECHR Blog

PS: As our attentive readers may have noticed, in all those years we tried to use a different picture or photo for every single post. Today, I am making an exception by re-using the illustration of the very first post from 2008, a map of Europe from Joan Blaeu's famous 17th-century Atlas Maior.

New Book on Persuasion and Legal Reasoning in ECtHR Rulings

Aleksandra Mężykowska and Anna Młynarska-Sobaczewska, both of the Institute of Law Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences, have just published a new book entitled Persuasion and Legal Reasoning in the ECtHR Rulings: Balancing Impossible Demands. This is the abstract:

''This book analyses the case law of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) from the point of view of argumentative tools used by the Court to persuade the audience – States, applicants and public opinion – of the correctness of its rulings. The ECtHR judgments selected by the authors concern justification of some of the most difficult issues. These are matters related to human life, human dignity and the right to self-determination in matters concerning one’s private life. The authors looked for paths and repetitive patterns of argumentation and divided them into three categories of argumentative tools: authority, deontological and teleological. The work tracks how ECtHR judges aim to find a consensual, universal and, at the same time, pragmatic and axiologically neutral narrative on the collisions of rights and interests in the areas under discussion. It analyses whether the voice of the ECtHR carries the overtones of an ethical statement and, if so, to which arguments it appeals. The book will be of interest to academics and researchers working in the areas of jurisprudence, human rights law, and law and language.''

The digital version is published open access and can be found here.