Submissions

We warmly welcome proposals for blogposts. Prospective contributors are invited to contact us via email to express their interest in writing a blogpost. In your initial contact, please let us know when you would be able to submit a full post. Please also inform us of any personal involvement (e.g. as an attorney or advisor to the parties) in the case you are proposing to comment upon. As a general rule, we will only accept spontaneous submissions from external authors once every three months, unless exceptional circumstances apply.

We will inform you as soon as possible whether we are interested in your proposal. Please note that we do not accept blog posts proposals by (under)graduate students, unless they are written under academic supervision. Please also note that Strasbourg Observers does not charge a fee at any stage of its publication process

Blog posts can focus on:

1. Recent developments in the case law of the ECtHR. In principle, we require blog posts to focus on judgments that are at most two months old at the time of publication.
2. Other recent developments at the level of the ECHR system or the Council of Europe.
3. Topical problems with Europewide resonance (e.g. COVID-19), examined through the lens of the ECtHR case-law.

Please note that we do not publish contributions that do not have a link to recent developments at the ECtHR.

Author guidelines

The editorial team reserves the right not to publish a post that does not conform to the below guidelines and/or does not meet our quality standards.

1. Please have your post checked for spelling and grammar before submitting it. We work with an international team of volunteers, and unfortunately we do not have the resources for language editing.
2. Length of 1,500-2,500 words.
3. We encourage using the following structure: 1. introductory paragraph that draws attention to the post, 2. short overview of the facts, 3. summary of the judgment, 4. comment/analysis of the judgment and its potential impact, and 5. short conclusion. Please consult existing posts for examples.
4. The “comment/analysis” part of the post should be substantial.
5. We strongly encourage at least mentioning and (briefly) discussing any separate opinions.
6. Please use hyperlinks to integrate all references to cases, literature and other relevant sources in the text. Avoid footnotes, although one or two footnotes for relevant explanations/additional context can be accommodated.
7. Please use British English throughout the post. Single quotation marks should be used for quotations. Where there is a quote inside the quotations double quotation marks should be used.
8. Please cite from the judgment itself and not from the press release or from the legal summary. Where quotes are used please cite the relevant paragraph of the judgment (para XX).
9. Please include a short bio of yourself (1-2 sentences, including e.g. your job title and affiliation) at the start of the post.

We will perform a marginal review of submitted blogposts. We may suggest minor language and editorial changes, if considered necessary. We may also make minor substantive comments (e.g. when an argument could be developed more convincingly, or where a relevant element has been left out of the discussion).

We aim to publish blogposts as shortly as possible after receiving them.

Blog posts submitted to Strasbourg Observers must reflect the original intellectual work of the listed author(s). The use of AI tools in the research and writing process is allowed, provided it aligns with this requirement. If AI contributes to a blog post in a way that would require acknowledgment were it made by a human (such as substantive input into the research or writing) this use must be clearly disclosed and explained within the manuscript. AI cannot be credited as a (co-)author under any circumstances. Consequently, any AI involvement that would, if performed by a human, warrant authorship recognition is not permitted.