Announcing a Blog Tribute to Judge Tulkens

Next month, Judge Tulkens will be leaving the ECtHR after serving on it for fourteen years. She has been the Belgian judge since 1998, the year the new Court started working. As of 2011 she has been one of the Court’s two Vice-Presidents.

We at the Strasbourg Observers are based in Belgium – at Ghent University – and are excited to be able to seize this opportunity to highlight Judge Tulkens’ unique contribution to the Court. We work on a research project entitled “Strengthening the European Court of Human Rights: More Accountability through Better Legal Reasoning” and, to us, Judge Tulkens epitomizes what our research is all about. As a judge she has tirelessly devoted herself to safeguard and improve the standard of legal reasoning in the ECtHR.

To honor and commemorate Judge Tulkens’ work, we have invited a number of her friends in legal scholarship and practice to contribute a guest post that contemplates her invaluable role in developing the Court’s jurisprudence. Some guest bloggers will discuss one of her numerous and incisive separate opinions, others will debate a leading case in which she was among the majority. We will put all the posts online over the next month.

Also, we hereby issue an open invitation to join us in exploring and celebrating Judge Tulkens’ voice on the Court. This blogging tribute is not conceived of as a traditional liber amicorum; everybody is welcome to participate, either by sending in a guest post or by posting something in the ‘comments’ section. Publication of such guest posts will depend on editorial acceptance.

We hope that all our readers and of course Judge Tulkens herself will take pleasure in this engagement with her work. Her inimitable voice on the Court will be sorely missed.

The Strasbourg Observers