Human Rights Set Sail from Strasbourg

The purpose of this paper it to situate the European Convention on Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights within the European institutional and legal landscape, noting the origins behind this international treaty, and the reforming Protocols that have amended the original text. It explains who can apply to the Court, how a complaint is dealt with, and the mechanism in place to enforce a judgment in the violating State. It explains how the Court relies on various types of documents and methods to diffuse its output, with a look at the full text database of the Court case-law, known as HUDOC. Finally the presentation illustrates how the Court Library catalogue can be used to search for references to secondary literature on the Court’s case-law.