My fellow blog editor Kushtrim Istrefi, together with Zane Ratniece, and Krešimir Kamber, have just yesterday, on the 75th anniversary of the ECHR, published The Companion to the European Convention on Human Rights with Brill Publishers. The editors, in many years of meticulous work, have guided dozens of expert authors to create almost 300 entries on the various concepts in the Convention and the Court's case-law. This in itself is a tour de force. The book is available as an E-book and later on will also be available in hardcopy.
This is the abstract:
'Over time the corpus of rights and obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights has developed into and is perhaps best understood as a system of autonomous concepts, with the European Court of Human Rights acting as its master of conceptualisation. The Companion to the European Convention on Human Rights seeks to identify and explain what these concepts are, how they have evolved, and how they have been applied by the Court. The Companion presents the first compilation and analysis of nearly 300 ECHR notions on Convention rights, principles, procedures and institutions.
The purpose of this book is to assist academics, judges and practitioners who specialise in the Convention and may require a trusted guide to specific notions which they encounter in their work. It is also designed to serve newcomers to the ECHR, such as students or public authorities, as a companion in their journey toward acquiring general or specialised knowledge in this area.'
Book presentations will follow at the European Court of Human Rights itself and at our own Netherlands Institute of Human Rights (SIM) at Utrecht University later on. Warm congratulations to Kushtrim, his fellow editors and all the authors - this will be a point of reference for work on the Convention for many years to come!
