The European Court of Human Rights
The European Court of Human Rights
From the Cold War to the Brighton Declaration and Backlash
This chapter studies the transformation of the authority of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) since its genesis. It shows how the ECtHR, until the mid-to-late 1970s, struggled to maintain narrow legal authority. Both the Court’s caseload and civil society engagement changed fundamentally however throughout the late 1980s and the 1990s when the ECtHR gained intermediate and extensive authority in large parts of Europe. During this period, the Court became the de facto Supreme Court of human rights in Europe. Starting around 2000, the Court became increasingly overburdened. It was in the context that a number of member states launched a systematic critique of both the Court’s power over national law and politics and the quality of the Court’s judges and their judgments. This discontent climaxed with the 2012 Brighton Declaration, adopted by all forty-seven member states, which began an institutionalized process that aimed to limit the ECtHR’s power.
Keywords: European Court of Human Rights, legal authority, intermediate authority, extensive authority, human rights, Brighton Declaration
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