* Mohammad Mohammadi, Martijn Wieling and Michel Vols, ‘An interpretable approach to detect case law on housing and eviction issues within the HUDOC database’, Artificial Intelligence Law (2025):
‘Case law plays a critical role in shaping our understanding of human rights, including the right to adequate housing. However, analyzing large legal databases like HUDOC, which contains over 40,000 cases, is a challenging task that requires automated solutions. This study focuses on detecting cases related to housing—a topic encompassing issues such as eviction, access to adequate housing and etc.—from the HUDOC database. For this, we developed classifiers to identify cases related to both housing and eviction issues. We first constructed a dataset using an unsupervised process refined through manual corrections. Then, we trained the Adaptive Chordal Distance-based Subspace Learning Vector Quantization models. These models achieved classification accuracies of 93% for housing-related cases and 91.5% for eviction-specific cases, matching the performance of transformer-based models while requiring fewer computational resources. Furthermore, they provide interpretability by assigning word-level importance scores, helping legal scholars understand and verify the reasoning behind the model’s predictions. The models identified 2,305 potentially housing-related cases. Manual reviews confirmed that 278 of 340 reviewed cases were indeed relevant. By detecting overlooked cases and enriching legal datasets, this study highlights the utility of NLP methods in facilitating the analysis of human rights case law. This approach supports a deeper exploration of housing rights and eviction-related decisions under the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), offering transparency, efficiency, and scalability for legal research.’
* Vladislava Stoyanova, ‘Review of Covid-19 measures by the European Court of Human Rights: How to avoid the ‘fair’, the ‘balance’ and ‘the fair balance’’ in In S. Bogojevic, and X. Groussot (eds), Constitutional Dimensions of Emergency Law (Hart/Bloomsbury 2025):
‘This chapter takes account of the judgments, the decisions and the communicated cases since March 2020 up to March 2024, that directly relate to the measures taken during the Covid-19 crisis. To assess them, the analysis is informed by the established standards in the ECtHR case law.’
* Edward Jones, ‘Revisiting Redfearn: The European Convention on Human Rights and the protection of political opinion in the workplace in Great Britain’, European Labour Law Journal (2025):
‘In Redfearn v the United Kingdom, the European Court of Human Rights held that it was incumbent on the United Kingdom to introduce measures to provide for protection from dismissal for employees on the grounds of political opinion or affiliation, regardless of their length of service. This resulted in a small but significant reform in employment law in Great Britain, namely the disapplication of the continuous service requirement for bringing an unfair dismissal claim where an employee is dismissed because of their political opinion or affiliation. In this article I argue that there is a positive obligation upon the UK to go further than what was required under Redfearn, namely, to provide judicial safeguards where non-employee workers are dismissed or applicants refused employment on (in either case) political grounds. The article provides an overview of the scope of workplace protection against detrimental treatment on political grounds in the UK. It considers this framework against the UK's obligations as a Member State of the International Labour Organization and the Council of Europe and notes that the issue is becoming more pressing with the development of social media. The article concludes by arguing that the UK should legislate to create gateway claims (or extend existing jurisdictions) for dismissed workers and disappointed applicants who consider that they have been subjected to such detrimental treatment on political grounds. Whilst the article focuses on the UK, its arguments can be extended to other Council of Europe member states which do not already provide such protection.’
* Christina Eckes, ‘“It’s the democracy, stupid!” in defence of KlimaSeniorinnen’, ERA Forum (2024):
‘Small numbers of litigants asking a small number of unelected judges to impose limits on majoritarian decision-making stands at least prima facie in tension with majoritarianism as a central legitimizing principle of democracy in Europe. In KlimaSeniorinnen, the European Court of Human Rights required the Contracting Parties to quantify a fair share national carbon budget. Several aspects of the ruling demonstrate great deference to the national democratic process: how the Court emphasized climate exceptionalism, extended NGO standing, reduced the States’ margin of discretion in relation to their (international) climate commitments, and approached extraterritoriality.’
* Arnfinn Bårdsen, ‘Chapter 18: A view from the European Court of Human Rights’ in Graham Butler (ed), Research Handbook on EEA Internal Market Law (Edgar Elgar 2025):
‘To what extent can an EFTA-EEA state be held responsible under Article 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) for the EFTA Court’s rulings, either because of structural weaknesses relating to the EFTA Court itself, or because of the state’s active participation in proceedings before the EFTA Court? To what extent can an EFTA-EEA state be held responsible under the ECHR for its own implementation of EEA law at domestic level, notably whether the protection of fundamental rights in EEA law implies the applicability of the Bosphorus presumption in the context of an EFTA-EEA state’s implementation of EEA law? It is these considerations in mind that are the essence of this chapter, offering a view from the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR).’
* Katalin Sulyok, ‘Verein Klimaseniorinnen Schweiz and Others v. Switz. (Eur. Ct. H.R.)’, International Legal Materials (2025):
‘On April 9, 2024, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR or the Court) seated in Strasbourg released its judgment in the Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz v. Switzerland case, which marks the first occasion where the Court found a violation of several rights of the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (Convention) in a climate change litigation case.’
* Evelien Timbermont and Louize Hannah Knops, ‘Judges’ free speech on social media: Theory versus practice? A theoretical and empirical study of judges’ freedom of expression on social media platforms’, European Labour Law Journal (2025):
‘This article analyses the multifaceted issue of judges’ freedom of expression on social media within the framework of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). The engagement by judges in public discourse has resulted in the potential for conflicts to arise between their right to freedom of expression and their duty of discretion. This article examines the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) case law concerning Article 10 of the ECHR, which protects freedom of expression, and the distinctive constraints applicable to judges in light of their role. By means of a comprehensive analysis of recent ECtHR cases, including Danilet v Romania, the article demonstrates how the exercise of judicial freedom of expression is moderated by the context and subject matter of the expression, particularly when conveyed via social media. Furthermore, the article assesses the impact of these constraints on the judicial conduct of Belgian judges, with a particular focus on their use of social media and adherence to professional standards, particularly within labour courts and labour tribunals. The research findings indicate that, while existing guidelines provide a foundation, the application of these standards by judges is influenced more by personal and professional ethical considerations than by ECtHR jurisprudence. Furthermore, many judges are reluctant to accept a hierarchy-based approach to the protection enshrined in the right to freedom of expression. This article advocates for further research across a range of legal jurisdictions to refine guidelines on judges’ freedom of expression on social media. Ultimately, this should ensure a balance between democratic freedoms and judicial responsibilities in an evolving digital landscape.’
