The Council of Europe is a regional intergovernmental human rights organization on the European continent with 47 member states. The Council of Europe should not be confused with the European Union, which is a political and economic union of 27 member states.
The European Convention on Human Rights is a regional treaty between Member States of the Council of Europe. The convention protects human rights and political freedoms in Europe.
Commentaries provide article-by-article analysis of treaties and include citations to relevant jurisprudence, preparatory works, and other documents. The following commentary is available electronically through Oxford Scholarly Authorities on International Law. The complete list of titles included in this collection is available here.
You can find additional commentaries by searching on NUsearch, our library catalog, for keywords such as [name of treaty] + commentary (example: European Convention on Human Rights commentary).
The European Convention on Human Rights by
The European Convention on Human Rights: A Commentary is the first complete article-by-article commentary on the ECHR and its Protocols in English. This book provides an entry point for every part of the Convention: the substance of the rights, the workings of the Court, and the enforcement ofits judgments. A separate chapter is devoted to each distinct provision or article of the Convention as well as to Protocols 1, 4, 6, 7, 12, 13, and 16, which have not been incorporated in the Convention itself and remain applicable to present law.Each chapter contains: a short introduction placing the provision within the context of international human rights law more generally; a review of the drafting history or preparatory work of the provision; a discussion of the interpretation of the text and the legal issues, with references to thecase law of the European Court of Human Rights and the European Commission on Human Rights; and a selective bibliography on the provision.Through a thorough review of the ECHR this commentary is both exhaustive and concise. It is an accessible resource that is ideal for lawyers, students, journalists, and others with an interest in the world's most successful human rights regime.
The European Court of Human Rights, established in 1959, rules on applications alleging violations of the rights set out in the European Convention on Human Rights and its protocols.
To find jurisprudence from the European human rights system:
Step 1: Consult a commentary or other secondary sources to identify citations to relevant cases and decisions. See above for suggestions on how to find commentaries and the Secondary Sources page of this guide for guidance on how to find additional secondary sources.
Step 2: Use the subscription and/or free resources suggested below to search for or retrieve cases. HUDOC is the official case law database for the European Court of Human Rights and permits full-text searches.