Fellow DISSECTer Anne Heinisch defended their PhD dissertation titled “The Evidentiary Practice of the European Court of Human Rights: Critical Reflections on its Historical, Institutional and Political Underpinnings”.
This presentation marked the opening of the public ceremony for their PhD defence, held at Ghent University on 2 September 2025.
Abstract
Facts form the foundation of any human rights claim; their accurate determination is essential to ensuring that judicial decisions align with reality, and justice is delivered. Yet, facts do not speak for themselves—when disputed, they must be established through evidence, meaning that the way courts obtain and assess evidence is crucial to their decision-making. Despite the centrality of evidentiary practices in international human rights adjudication, where they influence whether the parties meet on a level playing field or the scales of justice are skewed, the practice of the European Court of Human Rights has rarely been the central object of scholarly inquiry. To address this gap, this study sets out to reveal how the Court’s evidentiary practice has evolved to shape its decision-making. Using a Critical Legal Studies lens that foregrounds the often-hidden power dynamics, it interrogates the historical, institutional, and political underpinnings of the Court’s treatment of evidence. It does so by combining a legal doctrinal analysis of a wide cross-section of the Court’s jurisprudence with qualitative research methods involving a five-month study visit at the Registry of the Court and 53 semi-structured interviews with Court ‘insiders’ and litigators. The study finds that the Court’s treatment of evidence is neither inherently state-friendly nor applicant-friendly. Rather, evidentiary considerations are often an afterthought, and secondary to the Court’s immediate institutional priorities. This makes its evidentiary practice variable, if not volatile; it is shaped considerably by the individual agency of actors within the Court—Judges and, crucially, the Registry—as well as by caseload and political pressures. Currently, the study argues, these dynamics tend to play out in a way that benefits states while disadvantaging applicants. The contingent nature of evidentiary practice underscores the need for a more deliberate and transparent approach to evidence, guided by an express commitment to levelling the evidentiary playing field and guaranteeing substantive justice.
Key words
European Court of Human Rights, evidence, proof, burden of proof, standard of proof, evidentiary practice, efficiency imperative, political underpinnings, procedural fairness, power, truth
You can find their full PhD thesis here.