Friday 2 December 2011

Admissibility Checklist

Today, the Court launched yet another tool to make sure no clearly inadmissible applications are lodged in Strasbourg: an admissibility checklist. Whereas previous efforts were focused to a large extent on lawyers, this new initiative is aimed at the applicants themselves. In the Court's own words, with caveats well-known to anyone trained in law:

The Court is today publishing an on-line admissibility checklist which is designed to help potential applicants work out for themselves whether there may be obstacles to their complaints being examined by the Court. The checklist has been developed against the background of the continuing massive inflow of inadmissible applications which represent a heavy burden for the Court and its Registry and contribute to preventing well-founded cases from being decided in a timely fashion. The checklist is purely indicative and has no legal force. Nevertheless it is hoped that it may serve to save applicants the time and frustration which pursuing an inadmissible application entails.
One may note that before one gets to the actual checklist a page with number about the high numbers of inadmissible cases appears, an implicit dissuasive tool or just a factual warning?