This project examines the evolution of bad faith review before the European Court of Human Rights, in particular under Article 18 of the European Convention on Human Rights, Bad faith review emerged in the European Court’s case law foremost as a response to autocratic practices.  The project analyses central questions about bad faith review, namely,  trigger conditions of bad faith review (and therefore abandonment of good faith review), how illegitimate or ulterior purposes are identified in analysing bad faith restrictions to human rights, evidentiary standards for establishing bad faith and compliance with and impact of judgments that identify bad faith violations of human rights. 

Bad faith review is an under-developed and contested doctrine in international law. Sceptics argue that it may let too much of politics into law, it is hard to prove and it is likely to attract more backlash than compliance. The development of the ECtHR’s bad faith review offers a critical case to examine what bad faith review is comprised of, what it is for, whether it works and whether we need more or less of it in international human rights law and in public international law more broadly. 

Finnerty and Çalı (2025), ‘The Travaux Préparatoires and Progressive Treaty Interpretation: Article 18 of the European Convention on Human Rights’, 36 (2) European Journal of International Law, 475–499.

Çalı (2023) ‘The Present and the Future of Infringement Proceedings: Lessons learned from Kavala v Türkiye’, 2 European Human Rights Law Review 156-162.

Çalı B (2022) ‘Proving Bad Faith in International Law: Lessons from the Article 18 Case Law of the European Court of Human Rights’ in K Gábor, B Çalı and M Milanovic (eds.), Secondary Rules of Primary Importance in International Law (Oxford University Press 2022) 183–201.

Çalı (2021) ‘How Loud do the Alarm Bells toll? Execution of the ‘Article 18’ judgments of the European Court of Human Rights, 2(2) ECHR Law Review 274-342.

Çalı and Gürsel (2021) ‘The Council of Europe’s Responses to the Decay of the Rule of Law and Human Rights Protections: A Comparative Appraisal', 2(2) ECHR Law Review 165-179. 

Çalı and Hatas (2021) ‘History as an Afterthought: The (Re)discovery of Article 18 in the Case Law of the European Court of Human Rights’, in Aust and Demir-Gürsel (eds.) The European Court of Human Rights: Current Challenges in Historical and Comparative Perspective (Edward Elgar) 158-176.

Çalı (2021) 'Autocratic Strategies and the European Court of Human Rights', 2(1) ECHR Law Review 11-19.

Çalı (2018) ‘Coping with Crisis: Whither the Variable Geometry in the Jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights’, 35(2) Wisconsin International Law Journal 237-276.

Çalı (2017) ‘Merabishvili v. Georgia: Has the Mountain Given Birth to a Mouse?’ 3 December 2017, Verfassungsblog.

• Analyse the purposive evolution of bad faith reviews in the case law of the ECtHR.
• Identify and analyse doctrinal innovations in evidentiary standards for establishing bad faith.
• Examine the differences between bad faith and good faith review standards in human rights law and international law.
• Examine the effects that bad faith reviews have on our understanding of the distinction between law and politics.
• Situate the potential effects of this burgeoning judicial practice and doctrine vis-à-vis similar development in other fields of international law, most notably, international environmental law.