ABSTRACT
Do the rights guaranteed by the European Convention on Human Rights bear on legal relationships between private individuals? And, if so, how can the Convention’s human rights and fundamental freedoms be understood to affect private individuals inter se? Both of these questions are inter-connected. The first seems to have been answered in the affirmative by the ECtHR in its Von Hannover judgment. This clear and definite statement of legal principle might, from a theoretical point of view, appear doubtful, and thus weak, upon closer examination. Exploring the validity of the principle by probing into the Court’s case-law, however, is not only worthwhile for the observers in the ivory tower, but it can simultaneously help gain a better understanding of how the Convention law can, or must, be construed in order for international human rights guarantees to affect private-law relations. This again will affect the legal systems of the States Parties to the Convention, albeit through different channels, as exemplified in the preceding chapter by sec. 6 of the Human Rights Act 1998, on the one hand, and Article 59 of the Basic Law and the Federal statutes of consent to the Convention and its Protocols, on the other.
