Suchergebnisse

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) is the most active international court. After decades with few allegations of human rights abuses, the ECHR docket expanded in the 1990s. Paradoxically, long‐standing democracies can have standardized violation rates of the prohibition against torture that compare to transitional democracies that struggle to protect rights. Yet it is implausible that human rights abuses increased or that established democracies engage in more torture than new democracies. Instead variations in legal mobilization generate the surge and puzzling distribution of European judgments. I argue that discrepancies between the incidence of torture and litigation reflect variations in support structures, where declared violations can reflect the level of support that individuals receive in pursuing claims rather than the incidence of torture. This dynamic is most pronounced for foreign nationals, who typically possess fewer resources than citizens to access legal institutions and encounter popular and official hostility. As a result, much European litigation concerning torture in long‐standing democracies is transnational in character.

This article examines how litigation before the European Court of Justice (ECJ) and European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has contributed to the development of social rights. It argues that variations in the nature of supranational rights, powers of supranational courts, and ease of access influence the opportunities individuals have to engage these courts to enforce and expand entitlement to social protection. It demonstrates that individuals have pursued social-rights claims at a much higher rate before the ECJ than the ECHR but have also begun to respond to creative ECHR interpretation that extends social rights in directions not available under European Union law. In weaving together a complementary but not a comprehensive set of social protections, the two supranational courts are constructing a safety net that extends well beyond the original intentions of member countries and empowers some of the most vulnerable members of society.

Digitised version produced by the EUI Library and made available online in 2020.