June 09, 2010
Today, we are pleased to announce a guest post by Dragoş Bogdan* and Mihai Selegean**. Their post on the consequences of the defamation case Petrina v. Romania (14 October 2008, App. no. 78060/01) represents a welcome addition to some of our own posts on the Court’s defamation case-law. More information on the authors, who we […]
June 04, 2010
In a book published in 2003 Manfred Nowak wrote: “The OAS [Organization of American States] in comparison [with the Council of Europe] is composed of a wide range of states including both the richest industrialized countries (United States and Canada) and the poorest countries of the world (e.g. Haiti), as well as democracies and military […]
June 01, 2010
It is great news that the Grand Chamber has accepted the request for referral in the conscientious objection case of Bayatyan v. Armenia. Last October, against commonly accepted standards in the Council of Europe Member States (see, PACE, Recommendation 1518, 2001, paras. 2 and 3) and, despite Armenia’s official commitment to pardon conscientious objectors (see, […]
May 28, 2010
In the case of Fleury v. France of 11 May 2010, the European Court of Human Rights held that the freedom of expression of a politician, member of the opposition on municipal level, had not been violated by his criminal conviction for defamation of a public official, the mayor of the municipality. The ruling of […]
May 26, 2010
The European Court of Human Rights has recently ruled against a ban imposed on an American citizen’s re-entry into Turkey for past opinions concerning Kurdish and Armenian issues during her teaching activities in the eighties (Cox v. Turkey). The applicant had allegedly said to her university colleagues and students that the Turks had massacred the […]
May 21, 2010
The Strasbourg Court (Second Section) came out with a landmark judgment yesterday; Kiss v. Hungary. The applicant, Mr. Kiss, suffers from manic depression. Due to this condition he was placed under partial guardianship in 2005. In 2006, with the elections coming up, he realized that the Hungarian law forbade him to vote, as all persons […]
May 17, 2010
“The European Court of Human Rights is exceedingly transgressing its competence in asylum matters. The Court takes decisions on behalf of the national authorities, it enforces provisional measures despite not having the competence to do so and demands their immediate execution. It has granted property rights on unemployment benefits and has thus realized something that […]
May 12, 2010
To be honest, our team’s first reaction when discussing the recent Grand Chamber judgment in the case of Tănase v. Moldova was rather dismissive. We had the feeling that the Court was teaching Moldova the basics of what it means to be a democracy; a thing they would hardly do in a case concerning, say, […]
May 10, 2010
“When is a cross a cross?” was the heading of a post by Stanley Fish earlier this month in the NY Times Opinionator Blog. The entry referred to US Supreme Court’s recent ruling in Salazar v. Buono concerning a solitary Latin cross standing in the Californian desert as a memorial for those who fought in […]
May 06, 2010
In the case of Handölsdalen Sami Village and Others v. Sweden the applicants argued that legal costs at a national level that amounted to 690, 000 euro were in breach of the right to access to court under Article 6. The applicants were four Swedish Sami villages. The case concerned domestic proceedings about a disputed […]
May 05, 2010
This guestblog is written by our colleague Hannes Cannie* The criminal tribunal of Utrecht (the Netherlands) has rendered an interesting judgment (22 April 2010) in a case in which an alleged discriminatory cartoon was at stake. The Dutch branch of the Arab European League (hereafter, AEL), a movement in Belgium and the Netherlands that aims […]
May 04, 2010
By Lourdes Peroni, Saïla Ouald-Chaib and Stijn Smet Whether it is a Burqa or a Niqab, what is at stake is a face-covering veil. This veil is increasingly becoming the subject of heated discussion within Europe. In France, a bill that aims to prohibit its wearing is the subject of a national debate. Also at […]
April 29, 2010
The bulk of the cases appearing before the European Court of Human Rights concern length of proceeding cases that might not always be interesting for the public because of their technical character. However in a lot of other cases, the Court is confronted with very shocking facts. Cases of torture by public authorities, but also […]
April 28, 2010
On 30 March 2010 the European Court of Human Rights released its judgment in the case of Petrenco v. Moldova. The case concerned a newspaper article in which negative remarks were made about the applicant’s competence as a historian. The article further alleged that the applicant, a university professor and Chairman of the Association of […]
April 26, 2010
In a previous entry, Stijn commented on the case of S.H. and others v. Austria (see ‘How the outcome can be good, but the reasoning sloppy’). I agree with him on both counts; the outcome in S.H. is to be applauded, but the Court’s reasoning lacks bite. At issue was the Austrian Artificial Procreation Act […]
April 25, 2010
Once again, the Court has been called upon to decide on a case regarding prisoners’ disenfranchisement. In Frodl v. Austria, the applicant, convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment, was denied inclusion in the electoral register on the basis of Section 22 of the National Assembly Election Act which provides that ‘anyone who has […]
April 12, 2010
In the case of Akdas v. Turkey the Court was called upon to decide on a seizure of a novel. But it turns out, this is not just a novel, it is something more. The applicant published a Turkish translation of the erotic novel “Les onze mille verges” by the French writer Guillaume Apollinaire, which […]
April 12, 2010
Exactly one week ago, a lecture was organized at the Belgian University of Antwerp with the following title: “(long) live God, away with Allah”. A group of fanatic Muslims were not pleased about this title and they called their members to attend the lecture. When the speaker started his lecture, the followers from the Islamic […]
April 12, 2010
An observer of the Strasbourg case-law should always remember to include the inadmissibility decisions in her research. The changes in the Court’s procedures, introducing committees of three judges and judges sitting alone, have made this more difficult (those decisions are not on HUDOC), yet at the same time have resulted in a situation in which […]
April 12, 2010
The judgment delivered on 1 April 2010 in the case of S.H. and others v. Austria concerned the use of donors for in vitro fertilization (IVF). The applicants, two couples, wished to have children, but medical reasons impeded both couples from having them the biological way. They had no choice but to rely on IVF […]