The evolutionary approach of the European Court of Human Rights to the interpretation of the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms: periodization

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This article examines the issue of periodization of the evolutionary (evolutive) interpretation of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of 1950 applied by the European Court of Human Rights in its practice. The analysis that follows helps to comprehend the process of the interpretation of the European Convention in the light of the present-day conditions in its entirety and gives possibility to focus on identifying similarities and differences between two periods in the history of the European Court’s approach to the Convention as to a “living instrument” from 1959 to the present day. The creation of a single, full-time European Court of Human Rights in 1998, following the adoption of Protocol No.11 to the European Convention is a line that separates these periods from each other. An important question of the application of periodization as a research method is the choice of its criteria. Particular attention is therefore paid to the analysis of the qualitative and quantitative features of each period. The main tendency of the first period is the gradual formation of the evolutionary approach of the European Court of Human Rights to the interpretation of the provisions of the European Convention. The first case in which the European Court recognized an evolutionary approach to the interpretation of the Convention is Tyrer v. the United Kingdom (1978). The article also discusses the importance of the Golder v. the United Kingdom judgment (1975) which laid the foundations for the evolutionary interpretation. The significant role of the reports of the European Commission on Human Rights in the emergence of the “living instrument” doctrine in the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights is particularly emphasized. During the second period (1 November 1998 – present), evolutionary interpretation was finally established as a one of the main interpretative methods employed by this international court. The text of the European Convention has been modified without adopting its new edition.

About the author: Svyatoslav Kovalenko – Ph.D. student, Law Faculty, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia.

Citation: Kovalenko S. (2018) Evolutsionnyy podkhod Evropeiskogo Suda po pravam cheloveka k tolkovaniyu norm Evropeiskoy Konventsii o zascshite prav cheloveka i osnovnykh svobod: periodizatsiya [The evolutionary approach of the European Court of Human Rights to the interpretation of the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms: periodization]. Mezhdunarodnoe pravosudie, vol.8, no.3, pp.77–92. (In Russian).

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