Individuals from Minority and Marginalized Groups before the Strasbourg Court: Legal Norms and State Responses from a Comparative Perspective

The obligation of states to implement the European Court of Human Rights case-law and the potential to exert influence in domestic laws and policies have been instrumental in the establishment and consolidation of the regime of human rights protection established by the European Convention on Human Rights.

This article outlines a frame for exploring domestic implementation of ECtHR judgments by specifically focusing on case-law pertaining to marginalized individuals and minorities across different countries. The Court’s jurisprudence has progressively extended the scope of the civil and political rights contained in the Convention to address and at times embrace a multifaceted set of rights claims by non-dominant and marginalized groups, such as prisoners, immigrants, refugees, ethnic, religious, sexual minorities, etc.

The purpose of the research introduced by this article is to comparatively explore the conditions under which state authorities implement adverse judgments pertaining to such groups, as well as to probe whether these promote rights-expansive policy change at the national level.