Status of international agreements in the Russian constitutional law

International agreements are an important element stabilizing the international law and Russia’s relations with other countries. Bordering with 14 countries and being a politically active member of several dozen international organizations, Russia is a party to the vast number of contracts and international agreements concluded between countries as well as international organizations. In April 1986, the Soviet Union ratified the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties of 22 May 1969. After the changes in the political system, the Russian Federation as the successor to the Soviet Union defined the status of international agreements in the Constitution of 12 December 1993 in the Federal Law of 15 July 1995 on the international treaties of the Russian Federation and the Federal Constitutional Law on the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation. The purpose of this article is to present the status of international agreements of the Russian Federation, in particular the primacy of international law over national laws – in the light of Federal Constitutional Law, case law and the doctrine, including latest changes in the Law on the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation of December 2015.

Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms as a fundamental instrument of the European law – does this statement still remain valid?

Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms is often referred as a fundamental instrument of the European law. The following study, through a detailed description of the circumstances of creation of the Convention, its normative content, enforcement mechanism and the current context in which it is in force, seeks to demonstrate whether the above statement remains valid in the current political and legal reality. It is true that in the Convention sovereign states accepted for the first time legal obligations to secure the classical human rights and freedoms and – what is particularly relevant – to allow all individuals to bring applications against the state, leading to a specially founded international judicial body finding them in breach. This was a crucial, revolutionary step in the evolution of the international law that, for centuries, had been based on such deeply entrenched foundations as the ideas that the settlement of the freedoms and rights of individuals was within the domestic jurisdiction of states and that individuals were not subjects of rights in this law. The Convention has thus generated the effective enforcement mechanism in the world, which contribution to the setting of standards for the protection of human rights and freedoms is unrivalled. However, it cannot be lost from one’s sight that currently the presence of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union in the European legal space and the weakness of the Council of Europe, under of which auspices the European Convention on Human Rights was adopted, manifesting itself in the fact that it associates a large number of countries with quite diverse political and legal culture and the standards of democracy, make the practical importance of the Convention be the subject of constant verification.

The right to a fair administrative trial in the light of the standards arising from the Article 45 of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland

The aim of the paper is to analyze and criticly assess the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights concerning the applicability of the Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights to national legal procedings. The latter provision refers to cases in which the civil rights and obligations of individual or any criminal charge against him are determined. The author discusses the criteria which enable to qualify the case as civil or criminal in the autonomous meaning of the European Convention on Human Rights. She accepts in general the approach of the European Court of Human Rights, but underlines a need for further clarifications of applied criteria, to avoid inconsistence and allow the future case-law to be predictable.

Comments on the requirements for an individual  application to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg

The subject of this article is to present formal and material conditions which an individual application must satisfy in order not to be declared as inadmissible and in order to be examined by the European Court of Human Rights. These are above all: requirements of ratione personae, ratione materiae, ratione temporis and ratione loci, the necessity of exhausting of all domestic remedies, the necessity of keeping a period of six months from the date on which the final decision was taken and apart from that – since the Protocol No. 14 to the Convention came into force – suffering from a significant disadvantage. Some of these conditions will however be altered, if Protocol No. 15 to the Convention entries into force. It provides: (1) the shortening, from six to four months, of the time-limit within which an application can be brought before the Court after all domestic remedies have been exhausted, as stipulated in Article 35, paragraph 1, of the Convention, and (2) the deletion of the present admissibility requirement, in Article 35, paragraph 3 (b) of the Convention, which specifies that no case be rejected under this provision if it has not been duly considered by a domestic court.

The fundamental human right to dignity is the cornerstone of European legal culture. The right has been provided for in international, European, and national legal instruments. Its role as a benchmark reference for all other human rights has developed into a self-standing and self-executing right, especially under the new EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. This evolution from the traditional role of the right to dignity is analysed in case study based on a real case before the Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic in 2015. The analysis brings forward a reflection about the need to respect the concept of dignity and how it actually is observed in the European context.

The European Commission for Democracy Through Law was created in 1990 and for the last three decades has adopted a number of documents of related to electoral standards in democratic states. They include legal opinions on national laws (or draftlaws), as well as documents of a more general nature, concerning specific topics (studies, reports). In this article, the author aims at presenting the main documents that include the electoral standards developed by the Venice Commission. However, as the opinions of the Venice Commission are not binding, the second part of this contribution presents the way this contribution of the Venice Commission is taken into account in the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights in cases concerning the alleged violations of the right to free elections.

Hate speech in relation to racial, national and ethnic minorities as the limitation of freedom of expression. Notes on the example of selected judgments of the European Court of Human Rights

Hate speech in relation to racial, national and ethnic minorities is a common matter, appearing more and more frequently in public space and taking different forms depending on its brutality. There is a very thin line between hate speech and freedom of expression. Confronted with the wider freedom of speech and expression, hate speech requires taking some critical steps by both domestic and international authorities. The European Court of Human Rights, while examining the complaints concerning violations of the freedom of expression, verifies whether its limitations have certain grounds in the applicable law. The past jurisprudence of the Court clearly indicates when freedom of speech ends and hate speech begins, especially when offensive content is formulated in the mass media, e.g., on the Internet.

The text examines standards of freedom of speech stipulated by the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. The focus is on political expression, which deserves the greatest scope of protection according to Western norms determined by the jurisprudence of the mentioned court and the Supreme Court of the United States. In this connection, the latter has significantly influenced the case-law of the former. The text under discussion analyses the problem from the perspective of the case of Ziembiński versus Poland (2), 2016.

In Poland, women in need of termination of pregnancy are exposed, through the practice of application of law, to systemic abuse by public authorities and sometimes institutional abuse by healthcare providers. This results in the search for institutions outside of Poland to protect their reproductive rights. Therefore, it seems reasonable to draw attention to the multifaceted nature of the rationale that the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has indicated in its judgments on the legal and factual state of legal abortion in Poland. This paper is an attempt to synthesize the manifestations, indicated by the ECtHR, of Poland’s violations of the provisions of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms in matters relating to the termination of pregnancy. An analysis of the content of the judgments of the ECtHR and other source texts is used in this paper as the primary research method.

Potential Victim of Human Rights Violations on the Background of the Protection System of the European Convention on Human Rights

The article’s purpose is to present the concept of a potential victim of violations of the rights and freedoms of the European Convention on Human Rights. A group of complainants is treated as a victim, even though the violation affects society. The qualification of complainants as victims of human rights violations can be treated as the creation of European human rights law. The role of the Court is to apply the so-called ‘push’ and ‘pull’ factors, which cannot only effectively contribute to the implementation of the principles of the ECtHR. The article addresses the problem of the assumptions of the living instrument doctrine and the interpretation of the law currently associated with the active activity of judges (judge-made law). The concept of the potential victim of human rights violations represents an opportunity for the postulated expansion of the catalog of fundamental rights.

An analysis of the interstate complaint mechanism: a case study of Russian complaints to the European Court of Human Rights

This paper examines the functioning of the interstate complaint mechanism, focusing on the specific context of Russian complaints submitted to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). The interstate complaint mechanism allows states to bring cases against other states, alleging violations of the European Convention on Human Rights. Through a detailed analysis of Russian complaints, this study aims to shed light on the effectiveness and challenges of the interstate complaint mechanism. The research employs a comprehensive approach, combining legal analysis, case studies, and a review of relevant literature. Key aspects explored include the legal arguments put forward by Russia and the ECtHR’s decisions and the implications of these interstate cases for the protection and promotion of human rights within the Europe.