Contents - Constitutional Court of Georgia

Françoise Tulkens
THE EUROPEAN COURT
OF HUMAN RIGHTS IS FIFTY
RECENT TRENDS IN
THE COURT’S JURISPRUDENCE 1
Françoise Tulkens
Judge at the European Court of Human Rights 2*
President of the Second Section.
The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) is more than ever our common heritage
(“patrimoine”) and in this respect we share a common responsibility at national and
international level. As René Cassin noted in 1950, the Convention rights are the seeds of
peace. They are also the “essential bridges to building the future” as defined by the President
at the inauguration of the new Court of Human Rights on the 3 rd of November 1998.
Nowadays, accession to the Convention is a prerequisite for joining the Council of Europe,
formed in 1949 (in circumstances that warrant recall) in the aftermath of the Second World
War. It has now opened its doors to an enlarged Europe stretching from Vladivostock to
Coimbra so that it is important to hold fast to the “principles of pluralism, tolerance and
broadmindedness without which there is no democratic society”.
Today, perhaps the real issue here is how rights – especially human rights – are to be
taken “seriously” to borrow Dworkin’s expression 3 . Human rights are neither an ideology
nor a system of thought. If they are to have any meaningful bearing on the life of individuals
and communities, they must be translated into action. This means that the recognition
of human rights is inseparable from the machinery used to ensure their respect and protection.
Against this background, the text of the Convention operates at two levels: the rights
1 The judgments and decisions of the European Court of Human Rights referred to in the text are available on the Court’s internet website,
in the Hudoc database, at: www.echr.coe.int/echr/en/hudoc/
2 This reflects my personal view, and not that of the Court.
3 R. Dworkin, Taking rights seriously, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1977.
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