Procedural Justice in Human Rights Adjudication: The European Court of Human Rights

In the context of the project “Strengthening the European Court of Human Rights: More Accountability through Better Legal Reasoning”, Eva Brems and I have written an article in which we explore the relevance of the socio-psychological concept of ‘Procedural Justice’ for the European Court of Human Rights. I am proud to announce that this article has just been published in the February edition of Human Rights Quarterly. The full reference of the article is Eva Brems and Laurens Lavrysen, “Procedural Justice in Human Rights Adjudication: The European Court of Human Rights”, 35 Human Rights Quarterly (2013), 176-200, and you can access the article here.

To give you a glimpse of the article, here is the abstract:

The social psychological theory of procedural justice emphasizes the fundamental importance of procedural fairness judgments in shaping citizens’ satisfaction and compliance with the outcome of a legal process and in strengthening the legitimacy of legal institutions. This article explores the benefit of applying procedural justice criteria (participation, neutrality, respect, and trust) in human rights adjudication, with a particular focus on the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). It is argued that the ECtHR should take these criteria into account both at the level of its own proceedings and in evaluating how human rights have been dealt with at the domestic level.