Year: 2008
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On Wheels Behind Bars
Yesterday, the Court held, in the case of Scoppola v. Italy, that Italy had violated Article 3 ECHR. The applicant, a man in a wheelchair who had no physical personal autonomy, was sentenced to life imprisonment after killing his wife and wounding one of his…
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Hearings to be Watched
This month the Court will hold a number of notable hearings. Among them is the case of the Polish Autocephalous Orthodox Church v. Poland, concerning uncertainty of ownership of a number of church buildings and the implications for the freedom of religion (hearing 17 June).…
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Two ECHR Articles on SSRN
I would like to highlight two recent articles on the European Convention of Human Rights, both by professor Laurence Helfer of Vanderbilt University, who kindly drew my attention to them. The first, from the European Journal of International Law, focuses on the notion of ’embeddedness’…
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Bumpy Road to Strasbourg
The road to the Court in Strasbourg can be long and bumpy. And some applications are doomed to fail from the start. One needs only to think of the application filed by a computer animation company a few years ago, one of whose complaints was…
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Violation of Roma Right to Education
Today the Court held, unanimously, in the case of Sampanis and others v. Greece, that the treatment of a group of Roma school children by the Greek authorities violated Article 14 ECHR (prohibition of discrimination) taken together with Article 2 of Protocol No. 1. The…
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Implementing the Court’s Judgments
The Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has just declassified a report entitled Implementation of Judgments of the European Court of Human Rights. The report, which is part of the Parliamentary Assembly’s ongoing monitoring of…
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Jurisdiction Revisited Once More
The issue of jurisdiction in the context of human rights has been a focal point of much academic research in the past decade. Marko Milanovic of the Belgrade Centre for Human Rights has just posted a pre-print of an upcoming article in the Human Rights…
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Echoes from Chechnya
Last week the Court ruled in five cases against Russia concerning disappearances: Ibragimov and others, Betayev and Betayeva, Utsayeva and others, Sangariyeva and others, and Gekhayeva and others. Violations were found on many counts, including the right to life (Article 2 ECHR), the prohibition of…
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What’s in a name?
A local Turkish court ordered the closure of a Istanbul-based LGBT association (one of the only ones in the country) last Thursday . The name of the Lambda Istanbul Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transvestites Association was found to be contrary to Turkish morals, since it…
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Gone with the Wind
It may have passed unnoticed, as happens with many admissibility decisions, but last February the Court handed down its first decision dealing with nuisance from wind turbines – considering the possible drawbacks of this environmentally friendly way of producing electricity. The case of Lars and…