ABSTRACT
It is increasingly the case that textbooks and even more scholarly works analyse the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) as a body of doctrine to be treated by the same methods as topics of domestic law, in particular such methods as the dissection of judicial reasoning, for example. However, this mode of analysis must surely break down in the face of the complexities of Eastern Europe (and should perhaps be reviewed insofar as it is applied to domestic law). The events of 1989 (the fall of the Berlin wall) and 1991 (the collapse of the Soviet Union) have not signalled the apotheosis of Western liberal democracy and human rights. Indeed, Protocol 11 to the ECHR, which came into force in November 1998, abolishing the Commission and creating a new Court, may equally be the harbinger either of the devaluation and breakdown of the existing system, or of its triumphant consolidation across an unprecedentedly large territory.
