The recent past has shown an ever-growing fragmentation of the international legal system where lawyers and judges are facing more and more the phenomenon of the same legal question being discussed in different fora. This is particularly the case in the field of human rights that entails the dispersal of responsibilities for interpretation of numerous instruments among various different judicial and quasi-judicial bodies, of both universal and regional nature. In order to secure coherence and legal certainty in the system, it is important to respect a set of principles and rules of general international law, in particular Articles 31–33 of the 1969 Vienna Convention of the Law of Treaties (VCLT). The first goal of this article is to analyse whether the Court applies the rules of the VCLT to the interpretation of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Secondly, assuming that the VCLT fully applies, it will be analysed whether Article 31(1) VCLT is flexible enough to allow nevertheless some leeway for the development of specificities, especially as a result of the particular nature of the ECHR. Thirdly, it will be shown that the Court has indeed developed a set of specific methods of interpretation, aiming to render the rights enshrined in the ECHR effective. From the author's point of view, they can all be regarded as sub-forms (or partial aspects) of the teleological interpretation. He distinguishes between four dimensions of the principle of "effectiveness".
There is hardly any part of modern society that has not been influenced by the European Court of Human Rights since its establishment in 1959. More recently, Strasbourg has even entered into what had long been considered a purely ‘private’ matter, the organisation of sport. Sport’s ever growing importance within society, as well as FIFA’s own rather recent acknowledgment of football-related human rights issues and problems, suggest that the role and relevance of the ECtHR in this domain will continue to increase. After setting out the theoretical framework, the article addresses the areas in which the ECtHR has already decided cases on these issues, and elaborates on the areas in which the ECtHR potentially has a role to play. The article will also explain how the echr and ECtHR can contribute to FIFA’s Human Rights Policy, as well as the various avenues through which this can be achieved, and how the Court’s jurisdiction can be triggered in football-related cases.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.