Six Years as a Judge in the European Court of Human Rights 1998/2004: Highlights and Frustrations
| Author | Wilhelmina Thomassen |
| Date | 01 December 2004 |
| Published date | 01 December 2004 |
| DOI | 10.1177/016934410402200410 |
| Subject Matter | Part C: Appendices |
SIX YEARS AS A JUDGE IN THE EUROPEAN COURT
OF HUMAN RIGHTS 1998/2004: HIGHLIGHTS
AND FRUSTRATIONS
WILHELMINA THOMASSEN*
Ladies and gentlemen, dear friends,
It is a great honour for me to be invited to deliver a lecture on the occasion of the
23
rd
birthday of the Netherlands Institute for Human Rights (SIM). And I want to
thank in particular Cees Flinterman and Jenny Goldschmidt for having given me the
opportunity to review here the last six years during which I had the honour to serve
as a judge in the European Court of Human Rights.
The subtitle of my speech is announced as ‘highlights and frustrations’, but I
have to disappoint those of you who are interested in my frustrations. To find any
substantial frustration was the most difficult thing in the preparation of this speech.
The highlights were easier to find. The first one was the solemn swearing in on
1 November 1998 in the debating chamber of the Parliamentary Assembly of the
Council of Europe. Forty judges descended the stairs in brand new judicial robes,
with the parliamentarians sitting on their benches and our families watching from
the tribunes. Luzius Wildhaber, freshly elected by the plenary as a President, took
the oath in the name of all the judges before the Secretary General of the Council of
Europe, Daniel Tarschys, under the tones of the European hymn. Later on during
that day each of the judges took the oath individually in the hands of the President.
These were special moments. We started at the same day, the forty of us, with our
work in the Court and with our lives in a new city, most of us in a new country. This
created a strong commitment in the building up of the Court and of very good
personal relationships.
The building up of the Court was a process of great creativity. The result is the
Court as we know it now, a professional and strong organisation. In my speech I will
review first of all some of its characteristics and then present to you a selection of
what I see as the jurisprudential highpoints of the last six years.
1. 1953 – THE OLD COURT
Before turning to the process of building up the new single Court, it is helpful to
recall how the system worked before November 1998. The machinery of human
rights protection which came into force on 3 September 1953 provided for a
Commission (European Commission of Human Rights) and a Court, their members
meeting in Strasbourg on a part-time basis. The Commission was conceived as a filter
PART C: APPENDICES
Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights, Vol. 22/4, 675-689, 2004.
#Netherlands Institute of Human Rights (SIM), Printed in the Netherlands. 675
* Judge of the European Court of Human Rights (from 1 November 1998 until 1 November 2004). As
of 1 November 2004 she has been nominated as judge of the Supreme Court of the Netherlands.
To continue reading
Request your trial