ABSTRACT
The chapter is a prequel to the case study on the judicial treatment of European Court of Human Rights case law by Czech apex courts. It proposes a novel methodology on the study of judicial treatment which consists of three levels of analysis: the macro level, targeting overall general trends of courts’ approach and referencing standards; the meso level, analyzing deeper patterns and the impact of references on results of domestic rulings; and finally, the micro level, exploring examples of (non)implementation in the most controversial and discussed areas of human rights protection. It describes qualitative and quantitative methods used in the research, with particular attention placed on the benefits and risks of automated text analysis and manual coding. It describes the data collection and methodology on all three levels of analysis. The chapter also discusses challenges for empirical research of judicial treatment, and sources of potential inaccuracies that must be taken into account when interpreting the results of the case study on Czechia.
