Seventy-five years after its signing in Rome, the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) stands at a crossroads—celebrated in official ceremonies across Europe, yet increasingly viewed by many as a source of political and legal controversy rather than a cause for unbridled celebration. As dignitaries gathered on November 5, 2025, in Strasbourg for a solemn ceremony and gala concert at the Opéra national du Rhin—and with a formal lecture and reception planned in London—the broader public and much of the political class seemed largely indifferent, if not outright skeptical, about the institution’s contemporary role.
Originally, the ECHR was conceived as a bulwark against the horrors of Nazism and fascism. Signed by 12 states, including Britain, in 1950, the Convention was intended to enshrine a modest list of rights—life, liberty, freedom of speech and religion—meant to prevent egregious state abuses. According to UnHerd, the early vision was one of moral suasion, not judicial activism: enforcement would rely on state pressure, and litigation would be rare, with individual complaints allowed only if states opted in. The ECHR, in those days, was seen as uncontroversial—little more than a diplomatic safety net for civilized democracies.
But as The Spectator notes, the ECHR has evolved far beyond its humble beginnings. At the heart of today’s human rights structure stands the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in Strasbourg, which now expects its judgments to be obeyed without question. Individual complaints, once exceptional, now dominate the court’s docket. Far from simply calling out extreme state misconduct, the ECtHR has come to view the ECHR as a de facto constitutional bill of rights—one that, crucially, lacks the popular legitimacy of its American or French counterparts.
This transformation has not gone unnoticed—or unchallenged. Over the past two decades, the court has engineered what UnHerd describes as a “quiet power grab,” expanding doctrines such as extraterritorial jurisdiction and non-refoulement. The former allows the ECHR’s reach to extend even outside a state’s borders, as in the 2012 Hirsi Jamaa and Others v. Italy decision, which prohibited Italy from intercepting and returning migrants in the Mediterranean. The latter, non-refoulement, has been interpreted to prevent the return of individuals to countries where they may face harm—even if those countries are within the European Union and even when national security is at stake.
Perhaps the most controversial expansion has come under Article 8, the “right to respect for private and family life.” Once a narrowly defined protection, Article 8 has ballooned into a catch-all provision invoked to halt deportations of convicted criminals and illegal immigrants, as long as they have established some form of family life in the host country. British tabloids have seized on cases where deportation was blocked on seemingly trivial grounds, but behind the headlines lies a profound constitutional question: who decides who may remain within a nation’s borders—the people’s elected representatives, or an international court?
The ECtHR’s defenders maintain that it is simply upholding principles that member states agreed to. Yet, as The Spectator points out, since about 1980 the court has openly described the ECHR as a “living instrument,” an innocuous-sounding but transformative doctrine. This philosophy holds that the Convention’s provisions must be interpreted in light of “present-day conditions,” granting judges wide latitude to expand the meaning of rights according to contemporary sensibilities. Thus, the right to life now covers state failures to prevent threats from private actors, and Article 8 has been stretched to require laws on climate change—even when such measures have been explicitly rejected by national referenda, as happened in Switzerland in 2024.
The court’s reach has not been limited to migration or criminal justice. In recent years, it has weighed in on issues as varied as press freedom, hate speech, and even environmental regulation. Norway, for instance, was recently instructed by the court to impose bureaucratic hurdles on offshore oil exploration. These rulings, often made in the face of contrary public opinion, have fueled accusations that the ECtHR is not only overstepping its original mandate but also undermining democratic governance.
The backlash from elected governments has become increasingly vocal. In May 2025, nine European leaders signed a joint letter questioning whether the ECtHR had overstepped its authority on migration. In the United Kingdom, both the Conservative Party and Nigel Farage’s Reform UK have pledged to withdraw from the ECHR, while Labour leader Keir Starmer has proposed reviewing how international human rights law is interpreted by British courts, particularly to prevent unsuccessful asylum seekers from blocking deportation. The debate reached a fever pitch in 2023, when the ECtHR used Rule 39 to block the UK’s “Rwanda plan” to send certain asylum seekers to Africa just hours before the first flight was due to depart.
Yet the question of withdrawal is far from settled. According to UnHerd, while many British citizens believe the ECHR’s authority has gone too far, polls suggest that a majority do not support outright withdrawal. There is a sense—perhaps intuitive—that leaving the Convention would only be meaningful as part of a broader re-democratization of governance, one that restores the primacy of parliament and popular sovereignty.
The court’s defenders argue that judicial oversight is necessary to protect minorities and uphold fundamental rights against the tyranny of the majority. Critics counter that the ECtHR’s expansive interpretations have created a “constrained democracy,” where the forms of representation remain but the substance of political choice is eroded. Immigration policy, once the domain of parliaments, is now shaped by judicial rulings; economic and social policies are increasingly dictated by international treaties and constitutional doctrines.
This judicialization of politics, as legal scholar Ran Hirschl has argued, was a deliberate response by political elites to the rise of mass democracy. By transferring key areas of governance to courts and independent bodies, elites insulated themselves from popular pressure and controversy. The 1998 Human Rights Act, which incorporated the ECHR into UK law, exemplifies this trend—allowing governments to pursue contentious policies while deflecting blame onto unelected judges.
Even as the ECHR’s reach has grown, its effectiveness as a guarantor of liberty is open to question. As The Spectator notes, Russia and Turkey both committed serious human rights abuses while members of the Convention, while countries like Australia, Canada, and Japan remain liberal democracies without anything like the ECHR. The Convention’s defenders may raise a glass of prosecco at tonight’s gala, but for many, the celebration rings hollow.
The future of the ECHR—and the broader system of judicialized governance it represents—remains uncertain. What is clear is that the clash between democracy and transnational judicial authority is now one of the defining political issues of our time. As Europe reflects on 75 years of the Convention, the question of who defines and enforces human rights—and by what authority—has never been more urgent or more contested.
