Abstract and Concrete Reasonableness Review by the European Court of Human Rights

What is it about?

In many cases the ECtHR is clearly asked to examine an individual decision, such as an administra-tive or court decision, but many other applications concern the reasonableness of interferences caused by national legislation. At present, there appears to be considerable confusion and contro-versy with the Court’s judges as to whether its review in the second category of cases should be concrete (focussing on the individual case only), abstract (focussing on the legislative system as a whole), or both (or a hybrid). This article presents a systematic and qualitative analysis of the Court’s case-law to find out which approach it takes to reasonableness review of legislation in which types of cases. Based on the results of the analysis it further endeavours to answer the question of which approach would best fit the Court’s double role of delivering both individual and general justice.

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