A Tale of Two Courts: Luxembourg, Strasbourg and the Growing European Human Rights Acquis

Abstract

This article seeks to explore the human rights jurisdiction of the Court of Human Rights and European Court of Justice, and most particularly to study how they interact with each other. How do they acknowledge each other’s existence; how often do they cite each other’s case law; how, if at all, does their human rights jurisprudence differ from each other; how, if at all, does the bringing of a case in one court rather than the other affect its outcome; how does the courts’ use of each other’s materials differ from traditional comparative law usages; how does the close development of two near, but not identical, human rights jurisdictions in Europe affect the development of human rights in the European legal space?

Keywords: European Union, Human Rights, European Convention on Human Rights, European Court of Justice, European Convention on Human Rights