Saturday, March 15, 2014
Presidential Board Room (Omni Shoreham)
More than half a century has passed since the establishment of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). A product of the post-war legal order, the Court was set up against the political and ideological backdrop of the Cold War. What the founders envisioned was an international court tasked with ensuring peace and security in Western Europe. Over time, the ECtHR effectively evolved into an appeal court of last resort, enabling marginalized individuals to carry their aggrievances to the transnational level. The fall of communism and the accession of eastern and central European countries had transformative implications for the ECtHR. Faced with a ‘docket crisis’ owing to the rapid increase in the number of individuals under its jurisdiction, the ECtHR redefined its role as a ‘constitutional’ court at the transnational level and introduced a new power sharing mechanism with national courts. Designed with efficiency concerns, the “pilot judgment mechanism” has caused the doors of Strasbourg to be shut for thousands. This paper argues that the ECtHR’s transformation from a court open to every citizen into one inaccessible for many will have significant implications for justice in Europe. Based on an ECtHR judgment concerning a reparation scheme for the forcefully displaced Kurds in Turkey, the paper will empirically analyze the implications of the pilot judgment mechanism for the European citizen seeking justice. It aims to situate the abstract jurisprudential debates into their political context by drawing attention to real consequences of legal reforms adopted to ‘save the future’ of European institutions.
