Most Interesting 2020: Yildiz, A Court with Many Faces: Judicial Characters and Modes of Norm Development in the European Court of Human Rights

The third in our series "Most Interesting 2020":

Ezgi Yildiz, A Court with Many Faces: Judicial Characters and Modes of Norm Development in the European Court of Human Rights (European Journal of International Law, Vol. 31, no. 1, 2020)

It is always great to read ambitious work that manages to balance a multitude of complex aspects, and still stick the landing by actually being enjoyable to read. This is one such article. Using a conceptual framework that consists both of a typology of different judicial characters, and different modes of norm development, Ezgi Yildiz shows how the European Court of Human Rights has expanded and adjusted the norms of the European Convention on Human Rights over several decades. The article combines interviews with large-scale coding and analysis of the jurisprudence of the European Court and uses a case study on the prohibition of torture case law, to show how norms change, and how these changes are affected by altering institutional features, external context, and interpretative dynamics. It is a noteworthy article that contributes to the understanding of the role international courts have in developing international law.

Martin Lolle Christensen
4th Year Doctoral Researcher in Law
European University Institute