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European Court Of Human Rights - Description [2003] PICTRes 10 (31 October 2003)
European Court Of Human Rights
The
European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) was established by the 1950
European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental
Freedoms,
concluded under the aegis of the Council of Europe, with the
task of supervising, along with the European Commission of
Human Rights,
set up in 1953, the observance of the rights and freedoms listed therein.
The impetus from the adoption of the 1950 European Convention came from
the atrocities committed in Europe before
and during the Second World
War and the desire to bring the non-Communist countries of Europe together
within
a common ideological framework, stressing individual civil and
political freedoms and rights, as opposed to communist ideas.
After a slow start (it started functioning only in 1959 and a modest number
of submissions were received until
the end of the 1960s), the ECHR has
eventually grown into one of the largest, most accomplished and exemplary
international judicial bodies. Unlike in the cases of many other fora,
compliance with the ECHR's judgments is common,
exerting a deep influence
on the laws and social realities of member States. The record of the ECHR
is impressive
not only in comparison with those of the two other regional
human rights courts (the Inter-American Court of Human Rights
and the
African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights), for which it is a paradigm,
but also to that of all other
international judicial bodies. As a matter
of fact, after the ECJ, the ECHR has decided the largest number of cases
(as of January 1, 2000, 837 judgments), developing the most extensive
jurisprudence in the field of the protection
of human rights.
During the 1990s, two factors have further boosted its growth. Firstly,
with the demise of communism and the enlargement
of the Council of Europe
to Eastern European States, the ECHR has become, of the regional courts,
the one with
jurisdiction over the largest number of States (40), encompassing
the whole of Europe, including Russia. Secondly, on May
11, 1994, the
Council of Europe's member states concluded an additional protocol to
the 1950 European Convention,
known as Protocol 11, which fundamentally
changed the machinery for the judicial enforcement of the Convention's
provisions. Protocol 11 set up a single permanent Court in place of the
existing two-tier system of a Court and a Commission.
In the previous
system, individuals had access to the Commission, which produced non-binding
reports. As from
October 1, 1994, Protocol No. 9 enabled individual applicants
to also bring their cases before the Court, subject to the
ratification
by the respondent State and a screening panel of the Court accepting the
case for consideration.
Hence, unlike the other two regional human rights
courts (the IACHPR and the ACHPR), with the new system, private individuals
have access to the ECHR without an external filter. Moreover, now individuals
can, in limited circumstances,
seek a re-hearing in a case decided by
a Court's Chamber (7 judges) before the Court's Grand Chamber (17 judges).
This does not happen in the other two regional human rights courts.
Of all international judicial bodies, the ECHR perhaps is the only one
which has successfully undergone a major
overhaul, bearing witness to
the vitality of the institution and its significance for member States.
While the
World Court, with the transition from the PCIJ to the ICJ, has
also undergone a similar rejuvenation, the magnitude and
import of the
metamorphosis experienced by the ECHR is unmatched. This warrants distinguishing
between the Old
Court and the New Court , officially
born on November 1, 1998.
The combination of the entry into force of Protocol 11 and the Court's
expanded geographic jurisdiction have made
the number of potential claimants
soar to more than 800 million. Currently 41 judges cope with one of the
busiest
international dockets ever. The ECHR is the largest international
bench (also incorporating the largest number of women,
both in absolute
and proportional terms), and the only one in which size is not fixed but
is a function of the
number of States members (one judge per contracting
State).
Data obtained from the Project on International Courts and Tribunals (PICT)
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