Human Rights and Human Rights Defenders in the decline of the Rule of Law: A Study on Human Rights Lawyers at the European Court of Human Rights
Ezgi Özlü is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Luxembourg Centre for European Law, University of Luxembourg. She holds a PhD from the University of Strasbourg, where she examined how procedural costs affect the right of individual application before the European Court of Human Rights. Her dissertation received the 2024 Thesis Prize from the René Cassin Foundation. During her PhD studies, she was a Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute Luxembourg for Procedural Law, Department of International Public Law and Dispute Resolution (September 2019–December 2023). Previously, she worked on updating the memorandum of just satisfaction awards at the Department for the Execution of Judgments of the European Court of Human Rights and served as a Research and Teaching Assistant in Constitutional Law at the University of Kocaeli (2014–2016). Admitted to the Istanbul Bar, she holds LLMs in Human Rights Law (University of Strasbourg, 2017) and Public Law (University of Galatasaray, 2015). Ezgi’s research interests include questions related to access to justice (e.g. legal aid, procedural costs, admissibility requirements, reparations), lawyers (e.g. legal mobilisation, legal ethics, litigation funding), and various procedural aspects of international adjudication more broadly.
Human Rights and Human Rights Defenders in the decline of the Rule of Law: A Study on Human Rights Lawyers at the European Court of Human Rights
This project explores how and to what extent human rights lawyers contribute to the development of the case law of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). Recognized as the most effective human rights regime in the world, the ECtHR has emerged as a prominent judicial forum for lawyers who noticed the potential of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) to break new legal ground within national systems. However, as a strategic response to state discontent, the ECtHR has increasingly adopted a self-restrained approach. Moreover, most of the reform process have resulted in the risk of jeopardising the very essence of the right of individual petition. In the light of the heightened threshold to access to ECtHR, lawyers hold a greater power than before. Social movement actors, lawyers and expert NGOs can form ‘support structures’ for individual litigants and equip them with the necessary financial means and expert knowledge. Nevertheless, not all individuals have equal access to support structures that help them reach international courts. Human rights lawyers may thus play a crucial role in shaping the ECtHR's function in protecting and promoting human rights in Europe, particularly amidst declining rule of law and rising populism.
