Tuesday, 12 June 2012

New Policy on Reports of Judgments and Decisions

Even though most people will use the HUDOC database these days to find cases, the sheer amount of output of the Strasbourg Court means that authoritative selections of case-law remain very valuable. The Court's own Reports of Judgments and Decisions are the most important source in that respect. Recently, the Court has changed its policy regarding which judgments and decisions it will include in those reports. It will concentrate even more on only the most important decisions and judgments. The jurisconsult of the Court - the person responsible for case-law monitoring and preventing case-law conflicts - has made what the Court calls "a more fine-tuned selection." for 2007-2011 as well as for the first three months of 2012. The lists of selected cases can be found on this special page of the Court's website. It shows, for example, that in the first few months of this year, in the Court's own eyes the most important cases were: Stanev, Von Hannover, Sitaropoulos and Others, Hirsi Jamaa and Others, Konstantin Markin, Aksu, and Austin and Others.