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etween judiciary and a democratically chosen legislator’. 135 Camouflaging aimsand ideologies by framing them as legal arguments is also a bad method of justifyinglegal judgments. However, the legal system in which the ECtHR operates ischock-full of ideologies and policies. These ideologies can be driven by the judgeswithin the judicial limits of the ECtHR: legal argumentation allows it to show thatit has stayed within the limits of its legal discretion.The ECtHR’s argumentation has been analysed from the Nordic constitutionalismpoint of view. 136 The critical findings are that there is a clear preference forhuman rights over constitutional structures: activist human rights decision-makingappears particularly blind to national constitutional and legal-cultural structures.137 Consequently, the problem is not so much the substance of human rightsthemselves emerging from the case law but, rather, the specific manner in whichthese human rights norms are created. 138 Criticism can also be directed towardsthe manner in which dynamic human rights interpretations are reasoned by theECtHR. Furthermore, its argumentation too often leaves room for improvementfrom the point of view of acceptability. This deficiency is illustrated in the storiesthat appear below.We will now take a closer look at the general reasons for the increased interestin legitimacy in the context of the supranational and international courts andtribunals. The following section provides an overview of the key definitions of judiciallegitimacy and distinguishes the relevant ingredients used as a frameworkfor analysing the ECtHR’s legitimacy.2.2 LEGITIMACY OF THE JUDICIARY IN GENERALAll the articles that form part of this study are built on the idea of the ECtHR’s judiciallegitimacy, which therefore deserves to be explained here in greater detail.Much has been written about the different aspects and dimensions of legitimacy,and this study does not seek to engage in any a wider discussion of the theoryof this topic. 139 Instead, the focus is on the notion of legitimacy and its meaningand relevance in the context of the Convention. As the Council of Europe is aninternational organisation, and the ECtHR is one of its institutions, discussion ofthe legitimacy of international organisations seems hard to avoid.The traditional view is that questions relating to the legitimacy of internationalorganisations are of no significance because the member states are the source135Husa 2010, at 122.136Some Nordic constitutionalists have praised the ECtHR’s approach to judicial review (see e.g.Scheinin 2008; Nergelius 2008; Viljanen 2007), while others have been more critical of it (see e.g. Husa2002, at 181–188; Husa 2010; Føllesdal 2007a; Rytter 2001).137Husa 2010, at 118.138Ibid., at 122.139On the theoretical and empirical approaches to legitimacy, see e.g. Hurrelmann – Schneider – Steffek2007a.33