Suchergebnisse

ABSTRACT: This article interrogates institutional sources of trust distinct to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). Drawing from interviews with ECtHR officials and legal elites, the article identifies practices related to access, procedure, and performance that are central to direct stakeholders' evaluations of judicial trustworthiness. Elite trust is necessary for the continued operation of judicial bodies, and these stakeholders act as intermediaries with the potential to shape public perceptions. The article's findings have important implications for ECtHR's continued relevance, especially given the mounting resistance to it in recent years.

AbstractRecent research has shown that state reporting to human rights monitoring bodies is associated with improvements in rights practices, calling into question earlier claims that self-reporting is inconsequential. Yet little work has been done to explore the theoretical mechanisms that plausibly account for this association. This Article systematically documents—across treaties, countries, and years—four mechanisms through which reporting can contribute to human rights improvements: elite socialization, learning and capacity building, domestic mobilization, and law development. These mechanisms have implications for the future of human rights treaty monitoring.

Abstract
The growing impact of European institutions on the daily lives of citizens has stimulated greater attention to the public's trust in these bodies. Existing research on trust in the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) tends to focus on the role of judges and their rulings. In contrast, this article examines the role of the ECtHR's Registry. We argue that the civil servants of the ECtHR serve a critical function for the court's operation and have the potential to play an indispensable trust-building role. Drawing on interviews with court officials and survey responses from government agents, we identify and discuss the practices and features of the Registry that contribute to, or undermine, member states' estimations of trust in the ECtHR. In light of repeated and mounting criticism by member governments, our findings have important implications for the continued relevance of, and political support for, the Court moving forward.

International regulatory agreements depend largely on self-reporting for implementation, yet we know almost nothing about whether or how such mechanisms work. We theorize that self-reporting processes provide information for domestic constituencies, with the potential to create pressure for better compliance. Using original data on state reports submitted to the Committee Against Torture, we demonstrate the influence of this process on the pervasiveness of torture and inhumane treatment. We illustrate the power of self-reporting regimes to mobilize domestic politics through evidence of civil society participation in shadow reporting, media attention, and legislative activity around antitorture law and practice. This is the first study to evaluate systematically the effects of self-reporting in the context of a treaty regime on human rights outcomes. Since many international agreements rely predominantly on self-reporting, the results have broad significance for compliance with international regulatory regimes globally.

The core international human rights treaty bodies play an important role in monitoring implementation of human rights standards through consideration of states parties' reports. Yet very little research explores how seriously governments take their reporting obligations. This article examines the reporting record of parties to the Convention against Torture, finding that report submission is heavily conditioned by the practices of neighboring countries and by a government's human rights commitment and institutional capacity. This article also introduces original data on the quality and responsiveness of reports, finding that more democratic—and particularly newly democratic—governments tend to render higher quality reports.