60 years of the European Court of Human Rights

As the Court opens its judicial year 2019, it also marks 60 years of existence. Its first members were elected by the Council of Europe Consultative Assembly on 21 January 1959, with Lord Arnold Duncan McNair as their first President.

The theme of this year’s seminar to open the judicial year is ‘Strengthening confidence in the judiciary’, followed by a solemn hearing of the Court with President Guido Raimondi and Laurent Fabius, President of the French Constitutional Council.

The Court was established on the basis of Article 19 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which entered into force on 3 September 1953.