The Natural ‘Home’ of Fundamental Rights Adjudication: Constitutional Challenges to the European Court of Human Rights

Summary:

This article examines the recent critical remarks regarding Strasbourg adjudication as expressed by constitutional actors and questions to what extent the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) should consider these objections.

The first section of the article discusses the rationales for the harmonious relationship between the constitutional courts and the ECtHR. It explores the active role played by constitutional courts in the enhancement of the Strasbourg case-law in the domestic legal order. A second section scrutinizes the current emergence of constitutional critique. This section mainly focuses on the limits the German and Italian constitutional courts, and the UK Supreme Court placed on the implementation of the ECtHR jurisprudence in the domestic legal order. A third and final section considers whether there are valid reasons to take these critiques seriously and how to cope with the arguments in reality.