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The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) is an international court which can hear complaints about the actions of states, including the United Kingdom, who are parties to the European Convention on Human Rights. Those complaints concern alleged breaches of the rights protected by the European Convention on Human Rights when all domestic, legal remedies have been exhausted.
The role of the ECtHR is to ensure that member states operate their government and legal systems in ways which protect and uphold the most fundamental of human rights, such as the right to life, the right to be free from inhuman and degrading treatment, the right to a fair trial and the right to privacy.
The ECtHR has been able to receive complaints about the British Government for over 50 years. For most of this period, English lawyers were largely unaware of how to make use of this system of challenge.
Since the enactment of the Human Rights Act 1998 in October 2000, there has been an increased awareness about the role of the ECtHR as a final avenue of appeal against domestic decisions. However, as the rules of procedure before the ECtHR are very different from those before the domestic courts and there is a completely different system of funding applications, many lawyers are still reluctant to pursue these challenges.
