ABSTRACT
The chapter reviews theories of compliance and synthesizes findings of empirical research on compliance. It sits the book into a theoretical background helping to understand the broader influence of European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) case law on judicial domestic practice. It shows why it is fruitful to look beyond compliance and focus on judicial treatment more generally. The chapter first discusses the mainstream approaches towards the concept of compliance and deliberates on specifics of judicial interactions. Then, it explains what is meant by beyond compliance and introduces our concept of judicial treatment. It elaborates on differences between all these concepts and prepares the conceptual background for understanding the practice of the treatment of European Court of Human Rights case law by a domestic judiciary. The chapter concludes with a description of the three levels of judicial treatment and a demonstration of how judicial treatment advances existing research. It highlights the applicability of judicial treatment both outside the field of ECHR and international human rights case law.
