November 23, 2015
By Fleur van Leeuwen, LL.M. Ph.D., Dutch human rights researcher, based in Istanbul Turkey. On 29 September 2015 the international organisation Human Rights in Childbirth received a letter from the deputy registrar of the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR or Court). They were informed that the President of the Grand […]
November 18, 2015
By Stijn Smet The Human Rights Centre of Ghent University has submitted a joint third party intervention with the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, Maina Kiai, in the ECtHR cases of Mahammad Majidli v. Azerbaijan (no. 3) and three other applications. All four cases concern […]
November 12, 2015
By Dirk Voorhoof * The Grand Chamber’s judgment delivered on 10 November 2015 in Couderc and Hachette Filipacchi Associés v. France elaborates on the appropriate standard for privacy and the media under European human rights law. In essence, the Court discussed the public-interest value of a disputed article published in the magazine Paris Match, revealing […]
November 09, 2015
In the recent case of Konstantin Stefanov, the Strasbourg Court examined the acceptability of a fine (the equivalent of EUR 260) imposed on a lawyer, appointed ex officio by a domestic court, for declining to represent a defendant from the viewpoint of Article 1 Protocol 1. The Court did not find a violation of this […]
October 26, 2015
By Dirk Voorhoof * Recently, the Council of Europe Task Force for Freedom of Expression and Media published a book under the title “Journalism at risk. Threats, challenges and perspectives”. Since a Grand Chamber judgment of the European Court of Human Rights of 20 October 2015, a new threat for journalistic freedom has obviously emerged, […]
October 22, 2015
By Ronan Ó Fathaigh The European Court’s First Section has unanimously held that a protestor’s arrest and conviction for failing to obey a police order violated his Article 11 right to freedom of assembly, despite the demonstration being unlawful. The First Section’s opinion in Mammadov v. Azerbaijan tackled the difficult issue of how police officers […]
October 19, 2015
By Dirk Voorhoof * On 17 December 2013 the European Court of Human Rights had ruled by five votes to two that Switzerland had violated the right to freedom of expression by convicting Doğu Perinçek, chairman of the Turkish Workers’ Party, for publicly denying the existence of the genocide against the Armenian people (see […]
October 08, 2015
Guest post by Natasa Mavronicola, Lecturer in Law at Queen’s University Belfast. The Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights recently delivered an important judgment on Article 3 ECHR in the case of Bouyid v Belgium. In Bouyid, the Grand Chamber was called upon to consider whether slaps inflicted on a juvenile and […]
October 01, 2015
By Stijn Smet This Monday, 28 September 2015, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights overruled the Chamber judgment in Bouyid v. Belgium (see our post on the Chamber ruling here). The Grand Chamber found a violation of art. 3 ECHR on the substantive aspect of the case, ruling by a clear […]
September 28, 2015
I’m happy to announce the publication of my article “Strengthening the Protection of Human Rights of Persons Living in Poverty under the ECHR” in the September edition of Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights. In my article, which could hardly be any more topical than in today’s austerity-struck Europe, I address questions such as: what is […]
September 24, 2015
Few judgments have sparked more criticism than N. v. the United Kingdom. The high Article 3 threshold set in the case of a seriously ill woman expelled to Uganda where she died shortly after her return has been criticized both inside and outside the Court. Following what some considered a missed opportunity in S.J. v. […]
September 16, 2015
This guest post was written by Giuseppe Zago, Researcher of Comparative Sexual Orientation Law, Leiden University (*) Last 21 July, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in Oliari and others v. Italy had once again the opportunity to analyze the status of same-sex couples wishing to marry or enter into a legally recognized partnership. […]
September 14, 2015
This guest post was written by Adam Weiss and Judit Geller, European Roma Rights Centre. On 9 June 2015, a Chamber declared an application we submitted on behalf of a victim of forced sterilisation inadmissible. She had already received compensation from the domestic courts, depriving her (the unanimous Chamber found) of her victim status. You […]
September 10, 2015
By Saïla Ouald Chaib The enrolment as a PhD student does not come with a handbook. Consequently, you are somewhat forced from the start to reflect not only about the research subject, but also on the methodology you will use. In my case indeed, I spent some time not only doing research on the substantive […]
September 04, 2015
By Stijn Smet In this post, I aim to make two fairly straightforward points. First: methodology is crucial in any type of (academic) research. This is obviously the case for legal research as well, even if legal scholars have traditionally been less concerned with methodological questions than scholars in most other disciplines (I am painting […]
September 02, 2015
Lourdes Peroni In sharing my experience with methodological issues during my Ph.D., I would like to focus on the aspects I considered essential when selecting the frameworks that informed my case law analysis. In what follows, I outline the main criteria I used to select some of these frameworks and then zoom in on the […]
August 28, 2015
By Laura Van den Eynde, Research Fellow (F.N.R.S.) at the Center for Public Law – Université libre de Bruxelles. Laura’s Ph.D. research focuses on the relationships between human rights NGOs and jurisdictions and the influences these organizations have on judicial dialogue. This post aims at discussing a question related to case selection when conducting research. […]
August 26, 2015
By Dorothea Staes, PhD researcher at ULB and USL on the European Court on Human Rights’ references to external normative instruments to interpret the ECHR. Legal scholars repeatedly struggle with and are criticized for methodological aspects of research design, not least when undertaking case law studies. A holistic approach to judicial decision-making – introducing extrajudicial […]
August 25, 2015
This post was written by Valeska David, Helena De Vylder and Eline Kindt, doctoral researchers at the Human Rights Centre of Ghent University and members of the inter-university Human Rights Integration project. We are used to discuss and analyse the Strasbourg Court’s case law. We share our thoughts and findings in blogposts, papers and even […]
August 12, 2015
By Dirk Voorhoof, Ghent University After proceedings at the national level during eight years, and after a preliminary ruling by the EU Court of Justice in Luxembourg on 16 December 2008 (Case C-73/07), the European Court of Human Rights (Fourth section) in Strasbourg has delivered a controversial judgment in the domain of protection of personal […]