In April 2011, University College Dublin (UCD) School of Law research students held their Fifth Annual Postgraduate Conference, the theme of which was “The Legacy and Future of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). Evaluating Sixty Years of the European Human Rights Project.” The articles contained in this special edition of the German Law Journal reflect the efforts made at this conference by its participants. While the papers presented vary quite widely in their substantive content, they are connected by a recurring theme— that the ECtHR faces a crisis of legitimacy. A judgment is legitimate if it is persuasive to the civic society constituted by the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR), and perceived as authoritative by the subjects affected by the ECtHR's decision. The judgments of the ECtHR are fiercely criticized and their legitimacy is repeatedly questioned by the Contracting Parties and media in particular, and by civic society in general. As it stands, the ECtHR is suffocating from the overwhelming number of applications lodged, and even the tiny percentage of those applications that are decided by it face “a barrage of hostile criticism,” as Michael O'Boyle outlines in his article. The ECtHR's future, to a major extent, depends on how this crisis is tackled.

I would like to address the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) from the perspective of its past, its present and its future. Where did this institution come from and why? It was the first Court to provide the opportunity to an individual to sue his government before an international tribunal although the initial expectation was that it would be State parties that policed each other under the system established. Why such a radical innovation and to what purpose? Why should State parties create a stick with which they themselves might be beaten?

The European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) should be an instrument of development and improvement rather than an “end game” treaty which froze the state of affairs that existed 60 years ago. At the same time, evolutive interpretation should not be tantamount to arbitrary interpretation. This paper seeks to explain how the European Court of Human Rights (“ECtHR”) strikes a balance between development and stability.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has been considering whether same-sex couples should have the rights to marry and to be recognized as a family under the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) for over thirty years. In the 1980s the European Commission of Human Rights (the Commission) and the ECtHR respectively rejected the notion that same-sex relationships constituted a “family life” under Article 8 of the ECHR, and that post-operative transgendered persons had the right to marry under Article 12. However, throughout the 1990s and the first decade of the new millennium, the ECtHR handed down a body of judgments that incrementally liberalized these rights (albeit not always smoothly) in favor of LGBT persons. This evolution culminated in part on 24 June 2010, when the ECtHR passed judgment in Schalk and Kopf v. Austria. In that case the First Section of the ECtHR made a number of major, but seemingly contradictory rulings. For the first time in its history, the ECtHR ruled that same-sex relationships expressly constitute a “family life” under Article 8, and that the right to marry under Article 12 was not confined to opposite-sex couples in “all circumstances.” However, the ECtHR simultaneously ruled that Member States are under no obligation to protect that “family life,” by providing same-sex couples with access to marriage under Article 12, or an alternative registration system under Articles 8 and 14. The Grand Chamber denied the applicants' subsequent request for a referral.

The European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) is as much a political as it is a legal document. The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) constantly walks the delicate tight rope between vindicating human rights and respecting the sovereignty of contracting states. This balancing act is particularly sensitive when a situation of “exceptional and imminent danger” exists. In such instances of national security the state may need to act in a manner beyond the parameters of normalcy in order to neutralize the threat and protect both itself and its citizens. Article 15 of the ECHR therefore allows states to derogate from its obligations under the convention when a state of emergency is declared. On foot of a notice of derogation, a state has more discretion and flexibility to act accordingly to respond to a threat without being constrained by its obligations under the treaty. However, it is also in these conditions that human rights are at their most vulnerable as the state's response may encroach severely on individuals' rights and the liberal-democratic order of the state.

Over the last decade, the admissibility decision-making of the European Court of Human Rights has been the focus of considerable attention in the analysis of the “mounting pressure on the Convention system,” but has enjoyed little critical analysis in legal, sociological or socio-legal literatures. This paper will argue that this combination of intense attention and critical neglect is paradoxical, and has produced fascinating and hitherto largely unnoticed discontinuities and incompatibilities between the rhetorical representation of the Court's admissibility decision-making in ongoing Convention reform debates and the published jurisprudence of the Court on those standards of admissibility.

The evolution of the protection of fundamental rights in Europe is on the brink of entering a new phase, with the imminent accession of the European Union (EU) to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Assuming no unforeseen obstacles arise, the EU will soon become the 48th HCP to the Convention, and the first non-state signatory. This is a unique situation with clear legal and political consequences. Pre-accession negotiations between the Council of Europe and the EU have effectively concluded. The CDDH Informal Working Group on the Accession of the European Union to the Convention (CCDH-UE), established under the aegis of the Council of Europe's Steering Committee on Human Rights (le Comité Directeur pour les Droits de l'Homme (CDDH)), met regularly from July 2010 until June 2011, tabling the Draft Legal Instruments on the Accession of the European Union to the European Convention on Human Rights (Draft Accession Agreement) on 30 June 2011.

Ever since the conceptual division of rights into three separate categories; civil, political and social, the legal status of social rights has been controversial. This divergence in views is illustrated by the decision of the Council of Europe in 1950 to protect civil and political rights through a judicial format where adherence to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) was ensured by the European Court of Human Rights, whereas social rights were addressed separately through the European Social Charter (“Social Charter”), with merely a reporting mechanism to the European Committee of Social Rights.

It is a pleasure to be back in Dublin and to have this opportunity to speak to you about the Court and its future. Reading the outpourings of denigration in the newspapers recently you can be forgiven for believing that the Court is about to be towed into the middle of the Rhine and scuppered by a coalition of unhappy State Parties. So where does the future of the Court lie and how should one respond to such media buffetings?