More than half of all cases brought to the European Court of Human Rights come from just a handful of Eastern European countries, yet most of those cases never reach a judgment. This project asks what happens when people make human rights claims that never materialise. Legal scholars dismiss these "failed" cases as useless, but the researcher argues they reveal something important about how societies work. The project shifts focus from the law itself to the people behind it—applicants, lawyers, activists, judges, and state officials in Russia, Ukraine, Romania, Poland, and Hungary. If successful, the research will produce a new theory of how human rights mobilisation interacts with abusive constitutionalism, open military conflict, democratic backsliding, and deep social transformation. It aims to de-westernise human rights discourse, grounding it in conflict and reciprocity rather than abstract legal principles. This matters because human rights activism in Eastern Europe is surging at a time when the rest of Europe shows signs of human rights fatigue, amplified by Brexit and populist movements. The project has no immediate practical application, but it could reshape how international courts, NGOs, and governments understand the social consequences of rights claims that fail to become judgments.
View original technical description
This project begins with a puzzling statistic: over 50% of all cases before the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) come from only a handful of East European countries. Yet a great majority of these cases are also 'failed' cases - they never reach a judgment stage. While for legal scholars these 'failed' cases are of little analytical use, for socio-legal researchers this unprecedented human rights mobilisation constitutes a social fact and presents a window into the society: if human rights claims are made, but never materialize, what are the consequences? My main research question is: How do claims-making before the ECtHR shape the lives of individuals and the development of societies in Eastern Europe and Russia? To address this question, I propose a paradigmatic shift from a law-first approach in human rights scholarship to the study of the 'social life' and the everyday mobilisation of the Convention, re-focusing from the law and onto the people - the humans behind the Human Rights - the applicants, lawyers, NGO activists, judges and state legal counsels in Eastern Europe and Russia. The ultimate ambition for this project is to develop a brand new theory of the relationship between human rights mobilisation, ECtHR's legitimacy and the development of societies under the conditions of 'abusive constitutionalism' (Russia), open military conflict (Ukraine), deep transformations (Romania) and democratic backsliding (Poland and Hungary). To this effect, I will de-westernize human rights discourses in the region and lean toward the premise of conflict, reciprocity and disjuncture as core theoretical notions underpinning the geopolitics of knowledge on Eastern Europe and the Convention system. This project is timely and academically urgent as the current human rights activism in Eastern Europe and Russia is particularly intriguing against the backdrop of human rights fatigue across Europe, further exacerbated by Brexit and populist sentiments.
Plain English summaries and category classifications on this site are generated by AI and may not perfectly reflect the original research.
Is something wrong? Let us know