Case Law & Law Reports

The European Court of Human Rights, which is part of the Council of Europe, deals with complaints brought by individuals or by contracting states against another state under the European Convention on Human Rights 1950 (ECHR). 

Until 1999 the Court shared the responsibility of dealing with complaints with the European Commission of Human Rights and the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe. This process was simplified in 1999 by Protocol 11, which allowed individuals to bring actions directly before the Court.

Judgments

Judgments of the European Court of Human Rights are cited with an application number (including two digits for the year of application) and full date of the publication, e.g.

Dickson v the United Kingdom App no 44362/04 (ECtHR, 4 December 2007).

Selected judgments are printed in the official reports.

The official text of judgments and decisions appeared as Publications of the European Court of Human Rights from 1960 to 1996 in two series: Series A, Judgments and decisions, and Series B: Pleadings, oral arguments and documents. In both series each volume is normally devoted to one or two cases. Cases are cited in the format:

Ireland v. United Kingdom, ECHR (1978) Series A, No. 25.

In 1996 these were replaced by a single series: Reports of judgments and decisions, cited as ECHR with year and volume number

Dickson v the United Kingdom ECHR 2007-V.

Judgments reported in UK law reports

For UK law reports, the standard law report citation is used: .

Boyle v United Kingdom (2008) 47 EHRR 19.

The Yearbook of the European Convention on Human Rights, published since 1958, contains summaries of the decisions and judgments of the European Commission and European Court of Human Rights as well as relevant decisions of the Committee of Ministers; e.g. Austria v. Italy, YB 4, 116, 140

Searching online 

The European Court of Human Rights website incorporates HUDOC, a database of the official text of the Court’s judgments since 1959.  To access the database, click on the HUDOC link to search the online database (in English or French)

• The database can be searched using free text, party names and application number but not by citation.
• Several fields, including Case title, Article (of the ECHR) and Application have drop-down lists which allow you to select search terms in prescribed format

BAILII  (British and Irish Legal Information Institute) contains all judgments of the ECHR since 1960, except for some which are only available in French. 

• Click on Case Law Search and select European Court of Human Rights under Europe. The database is searchable by citation, case name or keyword. Text is available in html format only.

A selection of key cases aew listed on the ECHR Gateway