Please find below our newest selection of recent academic publications on the European Convention on Human Rights and its Court. Enjoy reading!
- Cathérine Van de Graaf and Beril Önder, ‘Judicial Restraint and Article 14 ECHR: The ‘No Need to Examine’ Practice Viewed Through Dissenting Opinions’, Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights (2026)
‘Article 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) has been the main tool of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) to fight against discrimination on various grounds. While Article 14 of the Convention is a subsidiary provision prohibiting discrimination in relation to the exercise of another right guaranteed by the Convention, according to the Court’s case law, Article 14 can be applicable even if there has been no violation of the substantive right itself raised in conjunction with Article 14. However, the ECtHR has not consistently seized opportunities to advance its anti-discrimination case law under this article. Most notably, the Court frequently concludes that there is “no need to examine the complaint under Article 14 of the Convention” when reviewing cases alongside another substantive article, even when the discrimination complaint is deemed admissible. The Court’s practice raises significant concerns, as it risks undermining both the institutional requirements of the Convention system and the proper consideration of the specific circumstances of individual cases.
The paper first identifies patterns in the ECtHR’s examination of Article 14, with a specific focus on cases in which the Court does not review discrimination complaints under this provision, with particular attention to those cases where disagreement exists among judges about the need to investigate Article 14 separately. In these separate opinions, valuable information can be found about the nature and role the Court assigns to this Article within the Convention system. These opinions are explored through a qualitative discourse analysis to lift out the arguments presented during the deliberations on Article 14. The paper aims to provide a more realistic and comprehensive understanding of the Court’s approach to discrimination cases, as well as the actual and potential role of Article 14 in addressing discrimination in Europe through the ECtHR’s work.’
- Erdem Demirtaş, ‘Proportionality without uniformity: computational analysis of doctrinal scaffolding across qualified rights in the European Court of Human Rights’, Human Rights Law Review (2026)
‘Qualified rights under the European Convention on Human Rights are typically analysed as sharing a single proportionality framework. This article tests that assumption. Computational analysis of 2004 judgments across four qualified rights (Articles 8–11), one procedural right (Article 6), and one absolute right (Article 3) reveals that ECtHR judgments exhibit a stable settlement-justification architecture in which General Principles sections are systematically more formulaic and precedent-anchored while Court’s Assessment sections are more case-specific and interpretively cautious. This architecture varies across qualified rights. Article 8 stabilizes doctrine through proportionality test recitation; Articles 10 and 11 do so through democratic value formulas. Article 9 displays a suggestive pattern of low doctrinal scaffolding, though this requires confirmation in a larger corpus. This demonstrates that a right’s normative character is associated not only with whether the Court balances but also with how it constructs the doctrinal framework within which balancing occurs.’
- Helen Hardman, ‘Freer and fairer? How the ECHR has helped reform elections to the European Parliament’, Human Rights Law Review (2026)
‘The caselaw of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) has granted states much leeway in the area of elections, which has attracted criticism that the Commission and Court have failed to protect citizens’ electoral rights. This paper traces reform of European Parliament elections since 1979 through the lens of this caselaw by comparing outcomes of applications and charting the progress of reform since complaints were lodged. The research finds the ideational power of unsuccessful applicants often appears stronger than the Commission’s or Court’s decisions. This demonstrates the extent to which the Commission and Court have applied judicial restraint, remaining behind the tide of progress, yet the process of individual complaint appears an effective forum to set the agenda for electoral reform. The focus on European Parliament elections offers a cross-section of election caselaw and is timely as the EU’s accession to the ECHR may be more imminent. Data are drawn from the caselaw, electoral legislation, parliamentary debates, and interviews.’
- Ethan Shattock and C R G Murray, ‘Political provocation through performance: artistic expression and the limits of counter-terrorism responses under the ECHR, Human Rights Law Review (2026)
‘The failed prosecution of the Kneecap band member Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh under the UK’s Terrorism Act 2000 has spurred public debates over what red lines apply to provocative political and artistic commentary in democratic societies. Critics of Kneecap have condemned the group’s statements as hate speech, while the Irish group’s supporters argue that artistic protestations are a particularly valuable manifestation of freedom of expression in drawing attention to the brutality of Israel’s conduct in Gaza. Kneecap themselves have characterized Ó hAnnaidh’s terrorism charges as a form of ‘political policing’ designed to distract from the group’s pro-Palestine activism. As this article argues, this attempted prosecution exposes a disconnect between various strands of jurisprudence relating to artistic expression, hate speech and the suppression of terrorism which arise under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). In an era in which authorities in many Council of Europe States have taken steps to restrict pro-Palestinian expression, this failed prosecution demonstrates the challenges in assessing the level of protection under Article 10 ECHR for artistic performances which convey controversial political messages. This article contends that, under the ECHR, Kneecap’s provocations should be contextualized in a manner that recognizes both the satire inherent in their performances and the significance of the cause they espouse. Employing the Kneecap case as an illustrative example, this article identifies the lessons from Strasbourg that should steer European states in the protection of provocative artistic performances within democratic governance orders’
- Rawnak Miraj Ul Azam, ‘Epidemiological causation and environmental standing under the ECHR: resolving doctrinal tensions after Cannavacciuolo and KlimaSeniorinnen’, Human Rights Law Review (2026)
‘On 30 January 2025, a court in Strasbourg did something it had spent 30 years avoiding. Faced with nearly three million people living on poisoned land in southern Italy, the European Court of Human Rights finally called environmental contamination what it is: a threat to life, not merely a disruption of its quality. Cannavacciuolo and Others v Italy moved the Convention’s environmental jurisprudence from Article 8’s balancing scales to Article 2’s firmer ground. But transformation, on closer examination, is incomplete. The judgment leaves its own causation standard unmeasured, its standing doctrine in contradiction with KlimaSeniorinnen, and its reach confined to harms the living can prove today. This article maps those silences precisely. It then proposes two frameworks, a Population Risk Standard for causal attribution and a Unified Three-Tier Standing Doctrine, designed not to extend the judgment beyond recognition, but to make its promise redeemable.’
- Stefano Osella, ‘The ghost of family past: the flawed protection of the traditional family in the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights’, Human Rights Law Review (2026)
‘The European Court of Human Rights has contributed a great deal to the recognition of same-sex unions in Europe. Nevertheless, it has also stated that the protection of the traditional family is, in principle, a ‘legitimate’ and ‘praiseworthy’ objective that may justify limiting the equality of same-sex couples. But is the protection of the traditional family really a legitimate or praiseworthy objective? Is the legal foundation of this doctrine as solid and self-evident as the Court seems to suggest? And what are the empirical and theoretical problems associated with the protection of tradition in human rights law? Taking its cue from the global debate on traditionalist adjudication, this article argues that the Court’s traditionalism is doctrinally ill-founded, theoretically flawed, and a setback for human rights in Europe.’
