August 30, 2012
The Strasbourg Observers are delighted to post this tribute to Judge Tulkens by Professors Sébastien Van Drooghenbroeck (Facultés Universitaires Saint-Louis) and Frédéric Krenc (Facultés Universitaires Saint-Louis) In a Grand Chamber judgment of 15 March, 2012 (Austin vs UK) the European Court of Human Rights held, by a majority, that containment within a police cordon during a violent […]
August 28, 2012
The Strasbourg Observers are delighted to post this tribute to Judge Tulkens by Professor Marie-Bénédicte Dembour, University of Sussex. Françoise Tulkens arrived at Strasbourg because she wanted to make a contribution to the development of European human rights law. She had no prior judicial experience but brought to her new office fine legal skills and […]
August 27, 2012
The Strasbourg Observers are delighted to post this tribute to Judge Tulkens by Professor Margarida Garcia, University of Ottawa. Ma rencontre avec Françoise Tulkens a sans doute été plus importante et inspirante pour moi qu’elle ne le sait. Dans le cadre de ma recherche doctorale, je me suis intéressée aux rapports entre les droits de […]
August 24, 2012
The Strasbourg Observers are delighted to post this tribute to Judge Tulkens by Professor Dirk Voorhoof, Ghent University. ‘Au moment où les vents sont contraires, nous pensons que notre Cour doit plus que jamais renforcer la liberté d’expression qui, loin de constituer une protection ou un privilège, est un des éléments clés de la démocratie’ […]
August 22, 2012
The Strasbourg Observers are delighted to post this tribute to Judge Tulkens by Professor Julie Ringelheim, Université catholique de Louvain. I warmly thank the team of Strasbourg Observers for this opportunity to highlight the remarkable contribution of Françoise Tulkens to the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) during the almost 15 years […]
August 20, 2012
The Strasbourg Observers are delighted to post this tribute to Judge Tulkens by Professor Ann Jacobs, University of Liège. La jurisprudence de la Cour européenne des droits de l’homme est riche et foisonnante, personne ne le contestera. Elle est le fruit de conceptions diverses de la Justice et de la justice, d’expériences professionnelles et humaines […]
August 16, 2012
The Strasbourg Observers are delighted to post this tribute to Judge Tulkens by Professor Samantha Besson, University of Fribourg. Françoise Tulkens is about to leave the European Court of Human Rights, and this is sad news. For the Court, of course, but also for the academic community. Throughout her career as a judge, Françoise Tulkens […]
August 14, 2012
According to HUDOC, Judge Tulkens sat on the panel of 1843 ECtHR judgments, amongst which 217 Grand Chamber judgments. The same source lists as her oldest judgment the article 6 case of Van Pelt v. France on 23 May 2000. As HUDOC – however wonderful – has its imperfections, we cannot know for certain whether […]
August 13, 2012
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 […]
July 31, 2012
This guest post was written by Gabrielle Guillemin* and is a re-blog from Inforrm’s Blog (original post here). Earlier this month, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights handed down judgment in Mouvement Raelien Suisse v Switzerland (Application no.16354/06). The case concerned the Swiss authorities’ refusal to allow a billboard campaign […]
July 23, 2012
The ECtHR has brought a turbulent Dutch legal saga to a close. In the highly interesting Staatkundig Gereformeerde Partij v. the Netherlands, the Court has declared the complaint by the Dutch political party ‘SGP’ inadmissible. The SGP is, in the words of the Court, “a confessional political party firmly rooted in historical Dutch Reformed Protestantism” […]
July 12, 2012
This guest post was written by Ingrid Leijten, Ph.D. researcher and teaching assistant at the Leiden University Faculty of Law, Department of Constitutional and Administrative Law. On 26 June 2012 the Grand Chamber delivered its judgment in the case of Herrmann v. Germany. It found a violation of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 concerning […]
July 03, 2012
One case I want to flag among the recent judgments of the Court is Koky and Others v. Slovakia. The case concerns an attack with possible racial overtones at a Roma settlement. In this post, I highlight a couple of interesting aspects of the Court’s reasoning under Article 3 but puzzle over the exclusion of […]
June 25, 2012
Can efficiency for the realization of a public good justify a rights-restrictive measure? Of course not. Human rights protect not only from governments or individuals with bad intentions, they also foreclose certain courses of action for the well-intended. That torture works to elicit confessions, is an argument often made by those who practice it, yet […]
June 20, 2012
This guest post was written by Cesare Pitea, Researcher in International Law (Faculty of Law) and Assistant Professor of Interational Law (Faculty of Political Science), University of Parma (Italy). 1. Judging in a Heated Political Context In the Scoppola v. Italy (no. 3) judgment ([GC], no. 126/05, 22 May 2012), the third chapter of the […]
June 14, 2012
This guest post was written by Wouter Vandenhole, Professor of Human Rights Law and holder of the UNICEF Chair in Children’s Rights at the University of Antwerp. Further information on Prof. Vandenhole can be found here. There is a growing interest with the human rights of older people (see e.g. Alexandra Timmer’s post here), also […]
May 24, 2012
In its recent judgment in Fernández Martínez v. Spain, the European Court of Human Rights appears to have abandoned its tried and tested formula of ad hoc balancing between the collective dimension of freedom of religion and individual human rights, established in Obst v. Germany, Schüth v. Germany and Siebenhaar v. Germany. In Fernández Martínez,the […]
May 18, 2012
In a recent case the Court used the ‘significant disadvantage’ criterion to declare a complaint inadmissible. In Liga Portuguesa de Futebol Profissional v. Portugal the Court made a clear distinction between the human rights issue at stake and the case at large (which concerned 20 million euros).
May 08, 2012
This post is co-authored by Lourdes Peroni and Alexandra Timmer The recent case of Yordanova and others v. Bulgaria concerns a pressing human rights issue: the mass eviction of Roma from their houses. The Court shows itself a strong defender of socially disadvantaged groups who risk eviction from land that they have lived on for […]
May 02, 2012
This guest post was written by Jogchum Vrielink, postdoctoral researcher at the University of Leuven, Belgium.[1] In Belgium, a Congolese student and a minority organisation sought to obtain a ban on the comic book ‘Tintin in the Congo’. A Brussels court rejected their claims. Despite this outcome, the reasoning of the court jeopardises free speech. […]