Oxford Reports on International Human Rights Law
Overview
Oxford Reports on International Human Rights Law (IHRL) covers international decisions on human rights from a variety of global and regional courts.
Cases on the European Convention on Human Rights
There is selective coverage of European Commission and Court decisions. Cases selected include all of the most important plenary and Grand Chamber judgments at the admissibility and merits stage of proceedings, as well as other decisions and judgments of significance for their contribution to the development of the case law of the European Convention. Criteria for including coverage of cases are:
- Whether the Court’s own mechanisms deem the judgment to be relevant (Grand Chamber judgments, pilot and priority judgments, etc);
- Whether the judgment demonstrates a potential or actual shift in the Court’s jurisprudence (be it an explicit acknowledgement that the Court is departing from its previous case law, or the presence of dissenting opinions that suggest future development); and
- Whether the Court is dealing with significant ‘real world’ issues, leading to greater scrutiny from the press, analysts, and national governments.
Headnotes and analysis of decisions up to the middle of 2007 have been supplied by the Centre for Human Rights Law at the University of Nottingham under the editorship of Professor David Harris. Headnotes and analysis of decisions from the middle of 2007 through the end of 2012 have been supplied by a team from the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights at the University of Utrecht under the editorship of Professor Leo Zwaak. Headnotes and analysis of decisions from 2013 onwards are being supplied by a team of reporters under the editorship of Lorna McGregor, Professor in the Law School and Director of the Human Rights Centre at the University of Essex, supported by Rajika Shah of the Center for the Study of Law and Genocide at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, California, as the managing editor.
Citations in ECHR reports on IHRL
IHRL reports on ECHR cases usually do not include citations to domestic instruments and legislation, as such references generally have only a minor relevance to the international human rights law issues. Where the provision is of real interest it will be noted in the headnote under the heading Related Developments.
Full citation information (ie, including all domestic citations) for each reported case on IHRL is available in the Oxford Law Citator.
UN human rights bodies
Headnotes and analysis of decisions through the end of 2012 (also including some decisions from 2013) were supplied by the Castan Centre for Human Rights at Monash University. Headnotes and analysis of the remaining decisions from 2013 and of all decisions from 2014 to the present are supplied by the Center for Global Public Law at Koç University.
IHRL provides comprehensive coverage of substantially all final decisions from the eight UN Committees which are able to deliver views in individual cases:
- Human Rights Committee
- Committee Against Torture
- Committee for the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women
- Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination
- Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
- Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
- Committee on the Rights of the Child
- Committee on Enforced Disappearances
Final decisions entail findings on the merits, as well as findings of inadmissibility. (Some inadmissibility decisions that have little or no jurisprudential value are not included.)
Decisions from the Inter-American system
American University, Washington College of Law provides comprehensive coverage of decisions from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and selected decisions of the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights.
Decisions under the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights
The Centre for Human Rights at the University of Pretoria provides comprehensive coverage of cases decided under the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, in both Court and Commission. IHRL will include a complete database of all cases decided on the merits and those admissibility decisions that have contributed to the development of the case law of the African Charter.
Editorial Board
Editors
European Court of Human Rights
Dr Stella Margariti is the Managing Editor of the Oxford Reports on International Law (IHRL/ICL) and Oxford International Organizations databases. She has been awarded her PhD in law by the University of Dundee. She is a graduate of the University of Piraeus, Greece (Degree in International and European Studies) and the University of Dundee (LL.M in International and European Law). Her doctoral thesis addressed the question of defining international terrorism for the purposes of international criminal justice and was subsequently published as a monograph. Her research interests include international criminal law, human rights and humanitarian law. She is also occasionally involved with the work of the Siracusa International Institute for Criminal Justice and Human Rights.
Jacqueline Mowbray is an Associate Professor at the University of Sydney Law School. She is also the external legal adviser to the Commonwealth of Australia's Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights. Her work focuses on public international law and legal theory, with an emphasis on international human rights law. She has a particular interest in economic, social and cultural rights, and her book on the subject, The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: Commentary, Cases, and Materials (co-authored with Saul and Kinley) was winner of the 2015 American Society of International Law Certificate of Merit. She also works on international law and language policy, and the position of linguistic minorities under international law. Her monograph Linguistic Justice: International Law and Language Policy was published by OUP in 2012. Before joining the University of Sydney in 2008, Jacqueline practised as a solicitor with Freehills in Melbourne and Barlow Lyde & Gilbert in London, and taught on the European Masters program in human rights at the University of Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina. Jacqueline is a graduate of the Universities of Queensland (BA LLB (Hons)), Melbourne (LLM) and Cambridge (LLM (Hons) PhD).
Kimberley Trapp is Deputy Dean / Head of Department and Professor of Public International Law at the Faculty of Laws, UCL. She served as the Faculty's Vice-Dean (International) from 2018-2022. Prior to joining UCL in 2012, she was a Lecturer at Newnham College and an Affiliated Lecturer at the Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge. Kimberley collaborates as an academic advisor on issues of international humanitarian and human rights law with various NGOs and Government departments, has published in leading academic journals and edited collections on issues relating to the use of force, State responsibility, the interaction between international humanitarian law and terrorism suppression, and the settlement of international disputes, and has presented related scholarship at various forums, including the Annual Meetings of the Canadian Council on International Law, American Society of International Law and Australian and New Zealand Society of International Law. Kimberley directed research at the Centre for Studies and Research in International Law and International Relations of the Hague Academy of International Law in 2012. She is co-editor of the OUP 'Elements of International Law' book series, a member of the Academic Review Board of the Cambridge International Law Journal, Board of Editors of the Journal on the Use of Force and International Law and serves on the Advisory Board of the McGill Journal of International Law & Legal Pluralism.
Inter-American Court/Commission
Prof. Christina Binder is Professor for International Law and International Human Rights Law at the Bundeswehr University Munich since April 2017. Before, she was University Professor of International Law at the Department of European, International and Comparative Law at the University of Vienna. Christina is member of the Council of the Global Campus of Human Rights since 2019 and Co-Rapporteur of the ILA Committee on Human Rights in Times of Emergency. She was member of the Executive Board of the European Society of International Law (ESIL) 2014-2022 and also served as ESIL’s Vice-President. Christina’s research focuses on a number of public international law issues, including human rights, the law of treaties, international investment law, democracy and political participation as well as international environmental law. She is co-editor of the Zeitschrift für Menschenrechte, the European Yearbook of International Economic Law and of the Hungarian Yearbook of International and European Law and has widely published, in edited volumes and in peer-reviewed journals.
Renata Rossi Ignácio is a Brazilian qualified lawyer with a deep commitment to human rights. She holds a Master of Laws in Human Rights Law from Central European University in Vienna, Austria, and another in Constitutional Law from Pontifical Catholic University in São Paulo, Brazil. Renata´s academic focus lies in the Inter-American System of Human Rights, complementing her professional involvement in humanitarian aid projects across the global South.
UN Human Rights Committee(s)
Başak Çalı is Professor of International Law at the Hertie School and Co-Director of the School's Centre for Fundamental Rights. She is an expert in international law and institutions, international human rights law and policy. She is the Chair of European Implementation Network and a Fellow of the Human Rights Centre of the University of Essex. She has acted as a Council of Europe expert on the European Convention on Human Rights since 2002.
Başak’s research focuses predominantly on international law and international institutions, with a special interest in international human rights law, its legitimacy, and domestic effects, as well as the prospects of global public law in a multi-level legal order. She has published on the interplay between international law and international relations, humanitarian intervention, the politics of human rights law-making, and the impact of international human rights law in domestic politics. She is also the editor of International Law for International Relations, OUP, 2009, and is the author of The Authority of International Law: Obedience, Respect, and Rebuttal, OUP, 2015.
Alexandre Skander Galand is Assistant Professor of International Law, University of Maastricht.
Aristi Volou is a Teaching Associate in Public Law at Queen Mary, University of London, and a Visiting Research Fellow at the British Institute of International and Comparative Law.
African Court/Commission
Stella Margariti
Previous Editors
Carla Buckley LLB (UNSW), LLM (Cantab) Barrister (Aust) is a Research Fellow at the Human Rights Law Centre, University of Nottingham, and is also a member of the editorial board of the Human Rights Law Review. Her publications include the first extensive study of litigation under the European Convention of Human Rights and most recently she co-authored the second edition of the seminal legal textbook Harris, O’Boyle and Warbrick: Law of the European Convention of Human Rights, 2009. Since 1999 she has acted as legal adviser in the conduct of human rights litigation before international forums. She has taught law in Europe and Australia, and regularly participates in international human rights law training courses.
Erica Contini received her BA and BSc from the University of Rochester, JD from American University’s Washington College of Law, and LLM (Human Rights) from Monash University. She was admitted as an attorney in the District of Columbia in 2007 and as a Legal Practitioner of the Supreme Court of New South Wales and Solicitor and Barrister of the Supreme Court of Victoria in 2008. She was the Project Officer of the Castan Centre for Human Rights. In 2008 she began teaching Constitutional Law at Monash University, and since then she has also taught in the areas of Criminal Law and Legal Research and Methods.
Shahna Esber
Kris Gledhill was, until 2006, a barrister in full-time practice in the English courts, specialising in appellate advocacy in the areas of mental health law and prison law. In 2007, he joined the faculty at the University of Auckland Law School, where his teaching responsibilities included international human rights law. He was the inaugural Director of the New Zealand Centre for Human Rights Law, Policy and Practice in 2012–13. In March 2016 he joined the Auckland University of Technology as Associate Professor of Law Programmes and Director of Clinical Legal Education. He is also the General Editor of the New Zealand Criminal Law Review.
David Harris is Co-Director of the University of Nottingham Human Rights Law Centre and Professor Emeritus, School of Law, University of Nottingham. He was formerly Professor of Public International Law, University of Nottingham. He is editor of the Human Rights Law Review. His publications include Harris, O’Boyle, and Warbrick, The Law of the European Convention on Human Rights, Butterworth; Harris and Joseph, eds., The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and United Kingdom Law, OUP; Harris and Livingstone, eds, The Inter-American System of Human Rights, OUP; Harris and Sivakumaran, Cases and Materials on International Law, 8th edn, Sweet and Maxwell; Bailey, Harris, and Jones, Civil Liberties: Cases and Materials, 5th edn, Butterworth; Harris and Darcy, The European Social Charter, 2nd edn, University of Virginia Press; Gomien, Harris, and Zwaak, The European Convention on Human Rights and the European Social Charter, Council of Europe Press; and Garner, Encyclopaedia of Environmental Law, Butterworth, 1976–2003.
Jennifer Jaimes
Sarah Joseph is the Director of the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law at Monash University, Melbourne. She is the main author (with Melissa Castan) of Federal Constitutional Law: A Contemporary View, 4th edn, Thomson Reuters (Professional) Australia Ltd, 2014, The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights: Cases, Materials and Commentary, 3rd edn, OUP, 2013, and A Handbook on the Individual Complaints Procedures of the UN, OMCT, 2006. She has also published books or articles on the relationship between human rights and corporations, international trade, and terrorism, amongst other topics. She has taught a variety of human rights subjects at the undergraduate and the postgraduate level, and has undertaken many training courses for Australian and overseas governmental bodies.
Magnus Killander is Associate Professor and Head of Research at the Centre for Human Rights, Faculty of Law, University of Pretoria. He is editor-in-chief of the African Human Rights Law Reports, co-editor of the African Human Rights Law Journal, and a member of the Editorial Board of the Oxford Reports on International Law in Domestic Courts. His research interests include international institutional law, regional human rights systems, the relationship between national and international law, and compliance with international human rights law.
Claudia Martin is Professorial Lecturer in Residence and Co-Director of the Academy on Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law at American University, Washington College of Law. She specialises in international law, international and comparative human rights law, and inter-American human rights law. Professor Martin has published extensively in these areas, and has also published on the domestic application of international human rights standards, co-authoring International Dimension of Human Rights: Guide of its Application in Domestic Law, Inter-American Development Bank, Washington, DC, 2002. In her capacity as Co-Director of the Human Rights Legal Partnership Program at the Academy on Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, she has, inter alia, designed and established a program to enhance domestic legal capacity in international human rights law in law schools in several Latin American countries. As Project Co-Director of the Inter-American Human Rights Digest Project at the Academy on Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, Professor Martin has, inter alia, advised domestic courts on the application of Inter-American human rights standards. Over the years, Professor Martin has held several positions in which she has developed programs and materials for training judges and lawyers on the domestic application of international human rights law.
Lorna McGregor is a Professor in the Law School and Director of the Human Rights Centre at the University of Essex (on study leave 2017). Her work has appeared in journals such as the American Journal of International Law, the European Journal of International Law, the International and Comparative Law Quarterly, the Journal of International Criminal Justice, and the International Journal of Transitional Justice and has been cited by the UK House of Lords and International Court of Justice. In 2015, Lorna was awarded the Antonio Cassese Prize for International Criminal Law Studies. Lorna is the Principal Investigator and Co-Director of an ESRC Large Grant (£5 million) on Human Rights, Big Data and Technology; the Principal Investigator of a Nuffield-funded project on the role of National Human Rights Institutions in Complaints-Handling; a Co-Investigator on an ESRC-funded project on Utilising Big Data in the Practice of Torture Survivors’ Rehabilitation; and a Co-Investigator on a British Academy Newton Fund grant on The Effects of International Human Rights Law on Public International Law and its Sub-Branches. She is a Co-Chair of the European Society of International Law’s Interest Group on Human Rights, a Co-Chair of the International Law Association’s Study Group on Individual Responsibility in International Law, a Contributing Editor of EJIL Talk!, and a Commissioner of the British Equality and Human Rights Commission.
Alexander Pung received his Master of Laws from Monash University in 2013. From 2008 to 2010 he was a Research Assistant with the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law.
Rajika Shah (LLM, London School of Economics) is with the Center for the Study of Law and Genocide at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, California. A member of the California bar, she has significant experience litigating complex human rights disputes involving foreign sovereigns and multinational corporations. She also represented Libyan terrorist hijacking victims before the US Foreign Claims Settlement Commission. She has published in the area of property and asset recovery for victims of genocide and other mass atrocities, and is a co-author of the first comprehensive study examining all significant legislation and case law passed by the 47 signatory states to the Terezin Declaration pledging to return immovable property confiscated or otherwise misappropriated during the Holocaust era (forthcoming, OUP). In addition to teaching international litigation, Professor Shah teaches in the area of comparative law and religion. She was instrumental in building and developing the Oxford Reports on International Law and Investment Claims subscription websites for Oxford University Press, and has reported on a range of admissibility and merits decisions from UN human rights treaty bodies for publication in Oxford Reports on International Law.
Leo Zwaak formerly served as a University Lecturer at the School of Law, Utrecht University, and Senior Researcher at the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights (SIM), where he taught European and African Human Rights Law and Criminal Law, respectively. He is visiting Professor at Washington College of Law at American University, Washington, DC, and has been a member of the visiting faculty at the University for Peace in San Jose, Costa Rica, and the Viadrina European University, Frankfurt Oder, Germany.
His research interests concern the European Convention and Court of Human Rights, topics on which he has published and lectured widely. He is an Executive Editor of the Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights. He is inter alia the co-author of: Theory and Practice of the European Convention on Human Rights, 4th edn, Intersentia, 2006; The Role of the Council of Europe and its Committee of Ministers: Analysing the Efficiency of Measures Taken under Article 46(2) of the ECHR, in Changing Perceptions of Sovereignty and Human Rights: Essays in Honour of Cees Flinterman, Ineke Boerefijn and Jenny Goldschmidt (eds.), Intersentia, 2008; Leo Zwaak, Yves Haeck, and Clara Burbano Herrera, ‘Strasbourg Takes Away any Remaining Doubts and Broadens its Pan-European Protection: Non-Compliance with a Provisional Measure Automatically Leads to a Violation of the Right of Individual Application...or Doesn’t it?’, European Constitutional Law Review, Volume 4 (2008), T.M.C. Asser Press, The Hague.
IHRL (UN) Reporters for 2023-2024
1. Vera Wriedt - PhD Researcher, Centre for Fundamental Rights, Hertie School Berlin
2. Giulia Ciliberto - Research Fellow in International Law at the University of Cagliari (Law Department)
3. Joseph Finnerty - PhD Researcher, Centre for Fundamental Rights, Hertie School Berlin
4. Annalisa Ciampi - Full Professor of International Law, University of Verona
5. Valeria Coscini - PhD Candidate, College of Law, Australian National University
6. Irina Crivet - PhD Candidate in Public Law at Koç University, Istanbul, Turkey
7. Barbara Sonczyk, Lecturer in International Law at the Hague University of Applied Sciences, Netherlands
8. Katayoun Hosseinnejad - Researcher in International Law (currently not affiliated to an institution)
9. Samuel White - Lecturer in Law at the University of the West of Scotland
