Gerards, Janneke; Terlouw, Ashley --- "Solutions for the European Court of Human Rights: The Amicus Curiae Project" [2013] ELECD 792; in Flogaitis, Spyridon; Zwart, Tom; Fraser, Julie (eds), "The European Court of Human Rights and its Discontents" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2013) 158

Book Title: The European Court of Human Rights and its Discontents

Editor(s): Flogaitis, Spyridon; Zwart, Tom; Fraser, Julie

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781782546115

Section: Chapter 14

Section Title: Solutions for the European Court of Human Rights: The Amicus Curiae Project

Author(s): Gerards, Janneke; Terlouw, Ashley

Number of pages: 25

Abstract/Description:

For more than 60 years the European Court of Human Rights (‘the Court’ or ‘ECtHR’) has been the guardian of human rights in Europe. When the Court was established in the late 1940s, the main objective was to prevent the terrors of World War II from reoccurring and to protect Europe against tyranny (and communism). The system created by the European Convention on Human Rights (‘ECHR’) was meant to function as an ‘alarm bell’ that would allow early intervention in case of threats of tyranny or oppression. Given this relatively specific and limited ambition, it is not surprising that for the first 20 years of its existence the ECHR system had little practical impact and the Court was far from overburdened.2 In the 1970s, however, this changed fundamentally when individuals discovered the potential for the protection of their rights by the European Court. The trickle of complaints grew into a small stream. Many of the new applications pertained to interesting and principled fundamental rights issues, which allowed the Court to develop important general principles as a basis for its judgments and interpretation of the Convention. In this period the Court handed down a number of landmark cases that are still of great importance to the Court’s work. One may think of cases like Handyside and Sunday Times on freedom of expression, Dudgeon and Marckx in the field of private and family life, Winterwerp and Engel on habeas corpus rights, and Golder on access to court. The argumentative power and quality of these judgments allowed the Court to firmly establish its authority as final arbiter in human rights cases.