B. Table of cases

The model system created by the European Convention on Human Rights is internationally renowned. The rights it protects are among the most important, covering not only civil and political rights, but also certain social and economic rights, such as the right to respect for personal possessions. The European Court of Human Rights stands at the heart of the protection mechanism guaranteeing these rights. It is now an entirely judicial system since the adoption and entry into force of Protocol No. 11, which reorganised the whole system and extended the Court's jurisdiction. The Court's excessive caseload is a problem, though, and this has led to the further improvements contained in Protocol No. 14, designed to strengthen the operation and effectiveness of the Court.

La Commission du droit international, après avoir longuement hésité, a inscrit l’état de nécessité dans sa codification de la responsabilité des États en tant que circonstance excluant l’illicéité. L’objet de cette étude est de démontrer qu’il s’agit d’un mécanisme beaucoup plus diffus et fondamental du droit international, intimement lié à ses caractéristiques propres. Il a comme fonction la limitation des obligations substantielles des États lors de la survenance d’un fait-condition – la situation de nécessité – afin d’éviter que l’application du droit ne génère un coût social excessif. Sa réalisation requiert toujours une pondération des intérêts en conflit. Seulement lorsqu’un coût social excessif ne peut être évité, l’état de nécessité intervient dans le cadre des obligations secondaires de la responsabilité internationale, en tant que circonstance atténuante. After much hesitation, the International Law Commission codified the state of necessity as a circumstance precluding wrongfulness in the field of State responsibility. This study aims to demonstrate that it is a much wider mechanism, essential to international law and strictly connected to its own characteristics. It performs the function of limiting the substantial obligations of States in case of the realization of a fact condition – a situation of necessity – in order to avert an excessive social cost, born out of law implementation. It always works through a balance of conflicting interests. Only when a social cost cannot be avoided, the state of necessity, under the features of a mitigating circumstance, enters the field of secondary obligations relating to international responsibility.

This volume of the "Yearbook of the European Convention on Human Rights," prepared by the Directorate of Human Rights of the Council of Europe, relates to 2001. Its presentation follows that of previous volumes. Part one contains basic texts and information of a general nature; part two deals with the European Commission of Human Rights; part three with the European Court of Human Rights; part four with the Resolutions of the Committee of Ministers; and parts five and six with the other work of the Council of Europe in the field of human rights, the situation in the Member States, and developments within the European Communities. A bibliography and index are included.

Modern family life exhibits a huge variety of new forms. Legal responses to these new forms illustrate the continuing differences between European nations. Nonetheless, the Strasbourg Court has been increasingly active in this area, which provides fertile ground for testing the legitimacy of the Court's interpretation of the European Convention on Human Rights. When national law refuses to recognize a claimed right, litigants regularly reassert that right before the Strasbourg Court. This has forced it to seek answers to complex domestic controversies, such as the legal recognition for same-sex partners and transgender persons, the ethics of adoption and reproductive rights, the legal regime for cohabitants, or the accommodation of immigrants' aspiration to family reunion. Placing family rights at the core of the judicial legitimacy debate, this book provides a critical analysis of the standards of family rights protection under the Convention. It evaluates the Court's interpretive methodology and discusses the tensions inherent in its supranational quasi-constitutional function. These include the risk of excessive deference to national authorities, at the expense of the effective enforcement of universal rights; the addition of 'new rights'; and inattention to the division of responsibilities between democratic processes within sovereign States and the subsidiary international review.

This volume of the "Yearbook of the European Convention on Human Rights, prepared by the Directorate of Human Rights of the Council of Europe, relates to 2003. Part one contains information on the Convention. Part two deals with the control mechanism of the European Convention on Human Rights: selected judgments of the European Court of Human Rights and human rights (DH) resolutions of the Committee of Ministers; part three groups together the other work of the Council of Europe in the field of human rights, and includes the work of the Committee of Ministers, the Parliamentary Assembly and the Directorate General of Human Rights; part four is devoted to information on national legislation and extracts from national judicial decisions concerning rights protected by the Convention. Appendix A contains a bibliography on the Convention, and Appendix B the biographies of the new judges elected to the European Court of Human Rights.