The Paradox of the European Convention on Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights’ Transformative Power

Abstract

Human rights problems exist all over Europe. Although the European Court of Human Rights is competent to deal with individual complaints about such problems, the Court is much criticised. Moreover, there may be little political will or capacity to tackle the structural problems which have caused such complaints to be made. At the same time, the judgments of the Court can be shown to have great impact on national case-law, legislation and policy. Paradoxically, thus, the Court’s case-law has an important transformative power, as is further explained in this article.