The European Court of Human Rights is an institution of the Council of Europe (CoE), based in Strasbourg, France. The Court is the supervisory institution established by the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Initially, the Court, together with the European Commission of Human Rights, formed part of a two-tier institutional system. These two part-time institutions were replaced by a single-tier, full-time European Court of Human Rights in 1998. The Court is composed of one judge elected in right of each of the CoE's forty-six member states.

Reflecting the reservations of national governments, the Convention originally provided for only a comparatively limited compulsory system of supervision. States, in ratifying the ECHR, had only to accept a right of interstate complaint. Under the terms of this mechanism, any state party to the Convention could bring a case before the European Commission of...