Assessing the Impact of the ECHR on National Legal Systems

Abstract

This chapter discusses the impact of the ECHR in 18 national legal orders. Topics covered include the reception of the ECHR into domestic law and practice, inputs into the ECHR legal system (applications) and the most important outputs (judgements of the Court and other decisions), the Court's impact on national legal systems, how the evolution of certain structural features of the Convention has complicated the reception process at the domestic level, and the future of the Court.

A cosmopolitan legal order: Constitutional pluralism and rights adjudication in Europe

“…Incorporation is an inherently constitutional process: it subverted centralized sovereignty at the national level, while provoking dynamics of systemic construction at the transnational level. The Convention quickly developed into a ‘shadow’ or ‘surrogate’ constitution (Keller and Stone Sweet 2008) in every state that did not possess its own judicially-enforceable charter of rights (including original signatories, Belgium, France, The Netherlands, Switzerland, and the UK). In the 1990s, Finland, Norway, and Sweden enacted new Bills of Rights, closely modeled on (and invoking) the ECHR, in order to fill gaps in their own constitutions.…”

“… 42 Systematic research on the impact of the Court on national law and policy has recently taken off, including Andenæs and Bjørge (2011), Buyse and Hamilton 2011; Hammert and Emmer 2011; Helfer and Voeten (2011), Keller and Stone Sweet (2008), and Von Staden (2009). …”

The Government Deference Dimension of Judicial Decision Making: Evidence from the Supreme Court of Norway

“…Domestically, courts have acquired greater power over their caseload, and this has led to dockets that consist of fewer but more policy‐relevant cases. Courts have also been empowered by developments in constitutional and international law relating to the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) and the European Union, which increasingly dominate the issue agenda of European high courts (Keller & Sweet 2008; Alter 2010), giving justices new opportunities to oversee public authorities (Shapiro & Stone 1994; Shapiro & Sweet 2002; Hirschl 2009; Martinsen 2011). The increased influence of these courts has drawn attention to the methods used to appoint judges to these courts, and to the diversity of justices' socio‐demographic and pre‐appointment judicial careers (Shaffer et al 2015).…”

The “Radiating Effects” of the ECtHR on Social Mobilizations Around Religion and Education in Europe: An Analytical Frame

“…In their de facto constitutional review role, courts like the ECtHR scrutinize national laws, policies, and practices for conformity with human rights principles 2 . While a growing non-legal scholarship has begun to explore the domestic implementation of international court judgments in national law and policy (Keller and Stone Sweet 2008; Hillebrecht 2012; Anagnostou 2013; Anagnostou and Psychogiopoulou 2013), virtually no attention has been paid to their indirect effects 3 . Yet, the indirect effects of international human rights rulings are arguably far more important than the direct impact that they can have by means of their formal implementation by state authorities (Galanter 1983; Cassel 2001, 122; McCann 2004).…”