irismerlinThe European Audiovisual Observatory, part of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, has just published a free e-book entitled “IRIS Themes – Freedom of Expression, the Media and Journalists: Case-law of the European Court of Human Rights” [pdf].  

This provides insights into the European Court of Human Rights’ case-law on freedom of expression and media and journalistic freedoms. It summarises over 200 judgments or decisions by the Court and provides hyperlinks to the full text of each of the summarised judgments or decisions (via HUDOC, the Court’s online case-law database).

This e-book is a digital vade mecum on Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights for lawyers, judges, law- and policy-makers, civil society actors, journalists and other media actors, academics, students, and indeed everyone with an interest in its subject matter. It can be read in various ways: for initial orientation in the steadily growing Article 10 case-law; for refreshing one’s knowledge of that case-law; for quick reference and checking, as well as for research purposes.

The summaries included in the e-book have been reported in IRIS – Legal Observations of the European Audiovisual Observatory between 1994 and 2013 and can be retrieved from the Observatory’s legal database, IRIS Merlin.

The structure of the e-book is as follows:

1.  Table of cases: an overview of all the cases summarised, including bibliographic data,
keywords, hyperlinks to the individual summaries and hyperlinks to the full texts of the
judgments or decisions.

2. Introduction by Dirk Voorhoof to trends and developments in the European Court of
Human Rights’ case-law on Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights in
the period 1994-2013.

3.  Compilation of case-law summaries.

4.  Appendices:
I:   Cases reported in IRIS, but not included in the main selection (i.e., cases that were
struck off the list/in which friendly settlements were reached).
II:   Overview of cases in alphabetical order.
III:  Overview of cases by country.
IV:  The European Convention on Human Rights – full text (as amended by protocols).