Dr. Inga Švarca has published the book ‘The Procedure of the European Court of Human Rights Regarding Countries in Transition. The ECtHR’s Transitional Justice Cases against Latvia’, which is also her PhD dissertation obtained at the University of Hamburg. Beyond being a case study of Latvia in transiton, it also has a lot of general insights to offer on transitional justice and the ECHR. This is the book’s summary:
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, all post-communist states in Europe were countries in transition facing specific judicial problems when they acceded to the European Convention on Human Rights.
These new Member States applied various transitional justice tools resulting in numerous applications examined by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). Nevertheless, the ECtHR has not (yet) followed a clear and foreseeable methodical approach to deal with these unique and complicated cases in an equal manner.
This analysis comes up with suggestions how to deal methodically with the changing role of the ECtHR and the challenges created by countries in transition with their manifold legacies.
