Civil Society and the European Court of Human Rights

2011 ◽  
pp. 77-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel A. Cichowski
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
European Court

scholarly journals Religion and Education in Romania: Social Mobilization and the “Shadow” of the European Court of Human Rights

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (S1) ◽  
pp. S79-S102
Author(s):  
Mihai Popa ◽  
Liviu Andreescu
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Public Education ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Case Law ◽  
Symbolic Capital ◽  
Social Mobilization ◽  
European Court

AbstractIn this article, we discuss the relation between the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and its jurisprudence and social mobilizations around the place of religion in the society. We focus on the struggles to define the intersection of religion and public education in Romania after the fall of communism. We show that secularist and counter-secularist civil society activists contending for the place of religion in public education in this country have made strategic use of the ECtHR and its case law, both in legal battles and in debates within the national public sphere. We argue that, since references to the ECtHR and its jurisprudence can be used in discursive battles as a form of symbolic “capital”, the strategies of mobilizing actors are at times more important than the strict doctrinal content of the ECtHR's judgments for understanding if and how the ECtHR's “shadow” is cast over religion-related mobilizations.

scholarly journals Why Attacks on Civic Space Matter in Strasbourg: The European Convention on Human Rights, Civil Society and Civic Space

2019 ◽  
pp. 13-37
Author(s):  
Antoine Buyse
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Case Law ◽  
European Convention ◽  
Judicial Decision ◽  
Judicial Decision Making ◽  
European Court ◽  
Civic Space ◽  
Work First

This article explores the role of the European Convention on Human Rights in addressing the issue of attacks on civic space, but also the potential effects of shrinking civic space on Strasbourg’s work. First, an overview of the notions of civil society and civic space is given, linking these concepts to democracy and human rights. Subsequently, the formal and informal roles for civil society in the judicial decision-making are discussed. Finally, the substantive protection offered to civil society and civic space under the ECHR and the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights is analysed. This article argues that the differentiations in theory on the varying contributions of civil society to democracy and human rights are to a large extent reflected in Strasbourg jurisprudence. Even more importantly, the ECHR system and civil society benefit from each other. This is why the current attacks on civic space are not just a problem for civil society itself, but also for the work of the European Court: it is submitted that a shrinking of civic space can also negatively affect the Strasbourg system, as the two are intertwined to a considerable extent.Received: 06 July 2019Accepted: 10 October 2019Published online: 20 December 2019

The European Court of Human Rights

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mikael Rask Madsen
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Legal Authority ◽  
Member States ◽  
Law And Politics ◽  
European Court

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.

From Litigation to Rights: The Case of the European Court of Human Rights

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jillienne Haglund ◽  
Ryan M Welch
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Council Of Europe ◽  
Domestic Environment ◽  
European Court ◽  
Human Rights Abuse ◽  
National Human ◽  
Frame Potential ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Rights Consciousness

Abstract Do regional human rights courts influence respect for rights? Beyond providing remedy for individual human rights abuse, case outcomes help frame potential social mobilization by setting standards and raising the rights consciousness of civil society actors. The expectation of mobilization can increase the government’s costs of flouting the court’s rulings. We argue that an enabling domestic environment characterized by two features increases government expectation of mobilization following regional court litigation. First, a robust civil society creates strong horizontal ties between potential mobilizing groups. Second, a national human rights institution (NHRI) creates vertical ties that both transfer information down from the court to civil society; and transfer demands up from civil society to political elites in position to make stronger human rights policy. Using data for all Council of Europe countries from 1980 to 2012, we find European Court of Human Rights litigation associated with higher respect for rights in an enabling domestic environment characterized by strong civil society and the presence of a NHRI.

Truth, Justice, and Commemoration Initiatives in Turkey

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Onur Bakiner
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Human Rights Violations ◽  
Political Movement ◽  
Criminal Trials ◽  
European Court ◽  
Turkish State ◽  
Laws And Policies ◽  
Agent Of Change ◽  
Past Wrongs

This chapter analyzes laws and policies that seek to reveal, publicize, and officially acknowledge facts about human rights violations, procure retributive justice through criminal trials, and attain restorative justice through compensation for victims in Turkey. In addition, it discusses efforts of victims’ groups, human rights associations, opposition political parties, and other concerned civil society groups to generate awareness around those violations. It addresses two main questions: Why has the Turkish state unveiled truth, justice, and commemoration initiatives, i.e., policies and gestures to acknowledge and redress past wrongs? Why have these efforts, mostly initiated in the 2000s and early 2010s, failed? The chapter argues that the combination of civil society activism, memory initiatives by opposition parties, especially the Kurdish political movement, diaspora pressures, and European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) rulings necessitated government efforts to address past wrongs. In some ways, the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) government’s (2002–present) narrative of modern Turkish history facilitated these initiatives, as it sought to solidify its support among minority constituencies and liberal intellectuals by marketing itself as the voice of the “democratic majority” and as an agent of change in a country where the state routinely committed, denied, and justified human rights violations. Yet, the AKP government’s instrumentalism and selective reconstruction of the national past also explain why these truth, justice, and commemoration initiatives failed to satisfy the victims, the broader human rights community, and independent observers. In a political landscape marked by shifting opportunities, threats, and alliances, the AKP government found it politically convenient to sacrifice those initiatives after 2011. The consolidation of AKP rule and the accompanying institutional decline of democracy that started around the same time pushed them further into irrelevance.

scholarly journals La transición española ante los sistemas universal y europeo de protección de los derechos humanos

2017 ◽  
pp. 63
Author(s):  
Jorge Rodríguez Rodríguez
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
Civil Society Organizations ◽  
Human Rights Violations ◽  
The Past ◽  
Derechos Humanos ◽  
European Court ◽  
The United Nations

<p>Over the past few years, but especially on the last lustrum, the United Nations has shown a deep concern about the situation of the Spanish Civil War and the Franco’s regime victims. Therefore the United Nations has recommend to Spain a series of legislative and institutional modifications in order to achieve a better protection of the rights to truth, justice, reparation and guarantees in order to avoid any future repetition of this sort of human rights violations. In this regard, victims and civil society organizations have sued eight times before the European Court of Human Rights the protection of these rights. Nonetheless, the Court has considered in every case that has no jurisdiction to pronounce about this matter.</p><p><strong>Received</strong>: 31 March 2015<br /><strong>Accepted</strong>: 15 October 2015<br /><strong>Published online</strong>: 11 December 2017</p>

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