The Question of Non-Independent Apex Courts as Effective Remedies to be Exhausted

What is it about?

One of the most important requirements to lodge an admissible complaint before the European Court of Human Rights is that you exhaust all effective national remedies. In essence this requires that individuals proceed until the highest national court, before lodging an appeal before the ECtHR. However, recently some countries have started to curtail the independence of their national courts, including their highest courts. The ECtHR has, for example, found in a string of cases against Poland that some of its highest courts can no longer be seen as being duly established by law. This raises the question whether individuals are still required to exhaust those highest courts as remedies before appealing to Strasbourg, or if they are allowed to skip them because those courts can no longer be seen as independent. This article discusses that novel question in light of the existing case of the Strasbourg Court.

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