The Influence of European Court of Human Rights’ Jurisprudence on Public Administration Governance Processes

Abstract

In the modern world of globalisation and integration the question arises as to whether the legal processes (namely law application processes) that occur at the international level may affect the unification of processes and decisions undertaken at the national level by the state authorities. This article is an attempt to answer the question about the potential impact of the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on public administration discretionary powers in governance processes. There are at least three important aspects of this phenomenon that correspond with the main questions of the paper. The first one ( 1 ) whether the ECHR system is efficient enough to prevent the infringement of human rights at the national level, especially when we con¬sider discretion of public administration bodies. The second one (2) how the jurisprudence of the ECHR may affect said discretion. The last question is the consequence of standards of protection of human rights that are introduced by the ECHR and which are binding on the countries that have signed the Convention of Human Right Protection. That is why it is worth analysing how a supranational court (like the ECHR) can influence the national decision making processes and at the same time whether we can observe unification of those processes in different states. In this context the question is (3) - whether the ECHR can be seen as an institution of global governance and if its jurisprudence does not breach the principle of separation of powers at the national level.