Lunch seminar with Catherine Van de Graaf
Just an accessory: the Strasbourg Court's separate examination of the discrimination complaint
Abstract
Article 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) prescribes that the enjoyment of rights and freedoms it includes shall be secured by the member states without discrimination “on any ground such as sex, race, colour, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, association with a national minority, property, birth or other status”. In this sense, Article 14 is an accessory right which is always attached to another substantive Convention right.
To say that the article 14 case law is thinly developed is not a controversial statement. On the contrary, during a recent exploratory interview round with Judges at the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) this was confirmed by several of them. It is true that the ECtHR is not a fourth-instance court and is not bound by the same obligation to state reasons as ordinary courts. Yet, this does not explain why when alleging an article 14 violation, the applicant almost automatically receives the default answer that “there is no need to examine the complaint under Article 14 of the Convention in conjunction with article [X] of the Convention”.
This paper investigates through automated content analysis (using Python) in which cases article 14 is not investigated by the Court, how this develops over time and how the non-investigation of article 14 relates to the investigation of other articles. As ECtHR-judges have the opportunity to state reasons when they disagree with the finding of their colleagues that it was not necessary to investigate the article 14-complaint, we are provided – on rare occasions – with some insight into the disagreement that surrounds the review of the article. When such division exists, the dissenting opinion of the judge(s) is subjected to qualitative discourse analysis as to find out the arguments that were present during the deliberations about article 14. In a second phase, these results will be discussed with judges at the ECtHR in order to find underlying reasons.
Speaker bio
Cathérine Van de Graaf is a postdoctoral researcher at the Academy for European Human Rights Protection (University of Cologne) under the direction of Prof. Angelika Nußberger. She assists in the teaching of “The European Convention on Human Rights: Theory and Practice” as a visiting professor at the Human Rights Centre (Ghent University). In 2021, she obtained a doctorate in law from Ghent University under the supervision of Prof. Eva Brems. In this context, she conducted and published empirical legal research with a focus on procedural justice theory, perceived discrimination and Islamophobia. In 2022, Cathérine obtained a grant from the Volkswagen Foundation for the project “Who is the Court for? Bringing the Human back into Human Rights Research” in which she focuses on empirically mapping out human rights trajectories before the European Court of Human Rights. She is part of the Human Rights Action Team of Ghent University which regularly contributes to Third Party Interventions before the ECtHR and coaches a team of University of Cologne students for the Helga Pedersen Moot Court Competition.
Meeting ID: 660 6132 9057
Passcode: 209507