Document Type

Article

Disciplines

International Law

Abstract

By almost all accounts, the system of international law established by the European Convention on Human Rights has been successful to a degree unimaginable when the Convention was signed in 1950. The European Court of Human Rights now routinely issues judgments finding the states party to the Convention to have defaulted in their obligations under it. Those judgments, sometimes touching on difficult and controversial issues that might have been thought to lie at the center of state sovereignty, are, almost equally routinely, honored by the respondent states who both pay the compensation ordered by the Court and also adjust their laws and governmental practices to conform to the Court's interpretations.

Now the European human rights system stands on the verge of an extraordinary expansion. With the fading of the totalitarian regimes in Central and Eastern Europe many of their democratic replacements are seeking admission to the economic, social and political institutions of Western Europe. While these institutions take many forms, the first step towards association with almost all of them involves membership in the Council of Europe. A tacit understanding has developed that membership in the Council is to be open only to those states who engage speedily to ratify the Human Rights Convention and, moreover, to recognize the compulsory jurisdiction of European Court of Human Rights and the right of individuals to initiate complaints alleging human rights violations before the European Commission on Human Rights.2 Given the effectiveness of the Convention in Western Europe in providing well-defined and progressive standards of state conduct, its extension to these new democracies is a hopeful event.

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