Human Rights Law

The European Human Rights Framework

The European system of human rights was created under the auspices of the Council of Europe, an intergovernmental organisation with 46 Member States.   

The principal regional European human rights instruments are:

• the European Social Charter (the Charter). Forty-three Council of Europe Member States are parties to the original 1961 Charter or the 1996 revised Charter. 
• the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). 

The principal European bodies responsible for defining and overseeing States’ compliance with their regional human rights obligations are the European Committee of Social Rights (the Committee), which monitors compliance with obligations under the Charter, and the European Court of Human Rights (the Court), which monitors compliance with the ECHR. Under the European system, as with the other main regional systems, only States may be held accountable for human rights violations. 

The Human Rights Building in Strasbourg, which houses the European Court of Human Rights. 

The European Committee of Social Rights

The European Committee of Social Rights monitors compliance with the European Social Charter under two separate procedures: 

• the Reporting System - State Parties regularly submit a report on the implementation of the Charter in domestic law and in practice. These reports are examined by the Committee, which decides whether the national situations they describe comply with the Charter. These decisions are called conclusions, and are published annually. These conclusions are declaratory - they set out the law, and national authorities must take measures to give them effect under domestic law. Domestic courts can declare invalid or set aside domestic legislation if the Committee has ruled that it is not in compliance with the Charter.

• the Collective Complaints Procedure - the Committee may decide complaints against those 15 States that have accepted the collective complaints procedures. The Collective Complaints procedure is a parallel protection system which complements the judicial protection provided under the ECHR. However, unlike the situation with applications lodged before the Court, individuals are not entitled to lodge complaints with the Committee. Complaints may only be submitted by European 'social partners' (trade union and employers' groups), employers’ organisations and trade unions in the country concerned, and international non-governmental organisations holding participatory status with the Council of Europe. Complaints may only raise questions concerning non-compliance of a State’s law or practice with one of the provisions of the Charter. Complaints may be lodged without domestic remedies having been exhausted and without the claimant organisation being a victim of the alleged violation.  If a complaint is considered admissible by the Committee, it adopts a decision on the merit of complaint. These decisions are not enforceable in the domestic legal systems of the State Parties. More on the Collective Complaints Procedure.

The Decisions and Conclusions of the Committee are available on the HUDOC-ESC database, and include decisions adopted by the Committee in the framework of the Collective Complaints procedure and follow-up of the decisions by the Committee of Ministers, and Conclusions adopted by the Committee in the framework of the Reporting System and follow-up of the Conclusions by the Committee of Ministers.

RSS feed of latest decisions of the Committee can be found below (use Firefox, IE or Safari to view feeds - they do not work using Chrome).

The European Court of Human Rights

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) is based in Strasbourg, France and began operating in 1959. The Court has jurisdiction to decide complaints ('applications') against all 47 Council of Europe Member States concerning alleged violations of the European Convention on Human Rights. Individuals, groups of individuals, non-governmental organisations and States may submit applications directly to the Court. The person, group or NGO does not have to be a citizen of a State Party, but the application must concern violations of the Convention allegedly committed by a State Party that directly and significantly affected the applicant. Individuals alleging human rights violations must generally have first tried to resolve the problem using appropriate remedies available at the national level. States will only be considered internationally responsible for human rights violations that the government failed to remedy when it had the opportunity to do so. The Court may also issue emergency protective orders ('interim measures') in exceptional cases when the applicant faces a real risk of irreparable harm.

Decisions & Judgments

Admissible applications are decided on the merits. The HUDOC-ECHR Case Law database contains all decisions and judgments on admissibility and merits from the first case in 1960 to current. It can be searched or browsed by eg: State Party, organisation, national legislation, keywords, date etc. Using HUDOC is the best way to find the most recent cases.

The Court's Case-law analysis website contains very useful information, including:

• Case-law Information Note - summaries of cases considered to be of particular interest and also provides news about the Court and Court publications.

• Overview of the Court’s case-law -  judgments and decisions which either raise new issues or important matters of general interest.

• Admissibility guide

• COURTalks-disCOURs - videos providing an overview of the Court’s jurisprudence 

• Case-law guides - arranged by theme

• Case-law research reports - these reports concern themes in the case-law, particular Convention provisions and the use of other international instruments in the Court’s case-law.

Finding a reported version of an European Court of Human Rights decision or judgment

The judgments on the HUDOC database are unreported. Not all judgments and decisions are subsequently reported - usually only those deemed significant. If you need to find a reported version, check:

Reports of Judgments and Decisions (cited in the case-law as ECHR and available in HUDOC under the importance level ‘Case Reports’) is the official online collection of the Court's leading judgments, decisions and advisory opinions since 1998, and is the preferred report series to cite. Publication is about three years behind. To see if recent cases have been selected for inclusion in the reports, check the annual lists under the Reports Case Selection heading. See also Case-law references of judgments, advisory opinions and published decisions - a master list of all judgments, advisory opinions and decisions that have been published or selected for publication in the Court’s official series. 

Butterworths Human Rights Cases ('BHRC') on LexisNexis Academic. This report series contains cases from the ECtHR and also significant cases from domestic courts in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the UK, Ireland and South Africa.

Oxford Reports on International Law (ORIL).

• To browse judgments, from the home page, click on the blue Jurisdictions button on the top menu bar, and select European Organizations/Institutions from the dropdown menu. Then, using the left hand menu under the Jurisdictions heading, use the + signs to open Organizations/Institutions>European Organizations/Institutions>Council of Europe>European Court of Human Rights [ECtHR] and click on the ECtHR link to see all reported ECtHR judgments, or narrow further to Grand Chamber decisions.

• To search judgments, use the Advanced search page and add eg: party, State Party, subject, and then under Content Type>Case Reports, checl the International Court Decisions box. You can then narrow to the ECtHR from the left hand menu (as described above) from the results page. 

International Law Reports on JUSTIS.

• From the JUSTIS home page, click Index and Contents.
• From the next screen, click the + sign beside Cases, then the + sign beside All Cases, then the + sign beside the International Law Reports. Cases are listed by year. Click ticks into the year/s you want to search, scroll to the top of the screen and click Show Results.

Citing ECtHR cases

• Mode of citation - an explanation of how to refer to the judgments and decisions of the Court - from the Court website.
• AGLC - 13.2.2 (pages 192 - 194 in AGLC3)

Case notes / summaries / commentary on ECtHR decisions

• Use the Human Rights Case Digest on HEIN Online. This very useful digest was published between 1990-2008.  
• Use the journal article databases referred to in the box to the left, and put the case name in the article  Title field

The Council of Europe & the EU

The European Commissioner for Human Rights

The Council of Europe Office of the Commissioner for Human Rights is an independent body which monitors human rights compliance with regional obligations, identifies gaps in protection and issues of concern in the region, facilitates activities of National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs) and civil society, and provides advice, recommendations and information on human rights protection to the Member States of the Council of Europe.

The Commissioner carries out country visits to monitor human rights situations, prepares thematic reports and provides advice in Issues Papers.

More on the role of the Commissioner from the International Justice Resource Centre.

European Commission on Human Rights

The European Commission on Human rights was a special tribunal that operated between 1953 and 1998. 

From 1954 to the entry into force of Protocol 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights, individuals did not have direct access to the European Court of Human Rights; they had to first apply to the Commission. If the Commission found the case to be well-founded, it would launch a case in the Court on the individual's behalf. Protocol 11 came into force in 1998 and abolished the Commission, enlarged the Court, and allowed individuals to take cases directly to the Court.

More information on the Commission can be found on RefWorld.

Commission decisions are in the HUDOC-ECHR Case Law database. See the box to the right for information on using HUDOC. To see all Commission decisions, select the Commission box only.

Note that although HUDOC contains most Commission decisions, not all are in the database. 

Selected Commission decisions are reported in:

• Collection of decisions of the European Commission of Human Rights 1960-1974 - 46 volumes 
  • available in print only 
  • This is not held by the University of Melbourne Libraries.

• Decisions and Reports: Council of Europe and European Commission for Human Rights
  • ​The Law Library holds vols 1-30 (1975-1983) on Level 4.

• European Human Rights Reports ('EHRR') on Westlaw UK 

Yearbooks

Finding Journal Articles on European Human Rights Law

To find academic / scholarly journal articles on European human rights law, irrespective of the journal in which they are published, we recommend using:

Westlaw UK (UK and European articles)

• Legal Journals Index (LJI) 
• Full Text Articles

The following databases will also include articles on the European human rights system:

• Index to Legal Periodicals - a multijurisdictional index of legal journal articles - mainly in UK, US and Canadian journals
• Legal Scholarship Network on the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) - for the most recent multijurisdictional scholarship
• AGIS for Australasian articles on European human rights law 
• HEIN Online:
  • Law Journal Library
  • ​Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals  (IFLP)

In addition to the above, for case notes / summaries / commentary on individual ECtHR decisions, use the Human Rights Case Digest on HEIN Online. This very useful digest was published between 1990-2008. 

European Human Rights Journals

Can also be accessed via Westlaw UK.

Recent full text open access articles on the European Human Rights System - on SSRN

Books

European Convention on Human Rights Blog

European Courts Blog

Other Research Guides