Accountability and Authority (Responsabilité et autorité)

The protection of human rights in Europe is at risk. What is to be done with the European Court of Human Rights? Many proposals may be subsumed under a general call for more accountability of the Court. To help our assessment of these suggestions, I first discuss accountability and point to a paradox of the accountable Court: its authority in the eyes of other actors requires both less and more accountability toward the States Parties. To move forward, I then summarize some of the risks that accountability measures are often meant to resolve, before concluding with six – or really five – challenges for the Court.