Human Rights Law Review Advance Access originally published online on January 20, 2009
Human Rights Law Review 2009 9(1):37-60; doi:10.1093/hrlr/ngn033
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Separate opinions in the European Court of Human Rights
*Professor of Law, The University of Leicester (robin.white{at}leicester.ac.uk).
**Sometime Research Associate, The University of Leicester.
Separate opinions, both concurring and dissenting, have been a feature of judgments of the European Court of Human Rights since its earliest days, but detailed studies of their incidence and impact have until recently been sparse. This article, based on an AHRC-funded research study, offers a survey of the research literature and describes the outcome of its own consideration of such opinions. The use of separate opinions in the European Court of Human Rights is significant, but the incidence of sole dissents by national judges is very low. It would appear that the main determining factor in the writing of a separate opinion is judicial temperament. There is some evidence that the background of judges prior to their election to the Court has some influence on their approach to writing separate opinions. The Court, however, demonstrates high levels of collegiality and the use of separate opinions contributes to the transparency of its decision-making.