March 18, 2014
Now that a little over a month has passed since the opening of the polls and over 250 votes have been cast, it is time to announce the winners – and ‘winners’ – in the categories of best and worst ECtHR judgment of 2013!
In the category of best judgment, celebrating the best the ECtHR had to offer in 2013, Vallianatos and Others v. Greece takes the prize with 22.5% of the vote, just ahead of Horváth and Kiss v. Hungary (17%) and Vinter and Others v. the United Kingdom (13.5%). In Vallianatos, the Grand Chamber of the Court took an incremental step towards full equality for LGBT by ruling that Contracting States that introduce a system of registered partnerships have to open that system up to same-sex couples, since barring them entails unjustified discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
In the category of worst judgment, indicating that there is always room for improvement, the ‘winner’ is even clearer. By far the worst ECtHR judgment of 2013, according to the votes received, was Delfi AS v. Estonia. Delfi received an impressive 37% of the vote, double that of the second placed Animal Defenders International v. the United Kingdom (18.5%), with Bouyid v. Belgium landing a solid third place with 15% of the vote. Fortunately, this is one of those wonderful cases in which we are able to report that bad news is followed by good news, since the ‘winner’ in the category of worst judgment – Delfi – has recently been referred to the Grand Chamber, offering the Court a chance to redeem itself!
Strasbourg Observers is an academic blog that discusses recent developments at the European Court of Human Rights. The editorial team of Strasbourg Observers is based at the Human Rights Centre of Ghent University and the Centre for Government and Law of Hasselt University.
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6 Comments
Many thanks for organising your illuminating poll! For anyone who wants to read more about Vallianatos, may we recommend this posting in our Case Watch series: http://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/voices/case-watch-court-rulings-juxtapose-stark-regional-differences-gay-rights
Funny that the 3 “worsts” judgments don’t find a violation of the ECHR, while the 3 “best” judgments do find a violation. Seems like a slightly teleological approach to “quality”, which should mostly rely to good legal reasoning, irrespective of the outcome.
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The worst decision by far was one concerning Janowiec vs. Russia. Members of families of the Polish officers murdered by Soviet Russians and Katyn and elsewhere (some 21,000 murders in this affair alone) sued Russia for pain and suffering incurred by the families. They lost. The Russians could afford the best lawyers, the survivors of Soviet murders lived in poverty for half a century. For the Tribunal to decide against them and in favor of Russia shows that the rich and powerful can influence even this august body.
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