02 April 2019

Law Faculty alumnus elected Vice-President of the European Court of Human Rights

Judge Róbert R. Spanó has been elected Vice-President of the European Court of Human Rights.

Robert achieved an MJur with distinction in European and Comparative law (University College) in 2000. He won the Clifford Chance Prize (proxime accessit) and the Civil Procedure Prize. He went on to serve as a judge in Reykjanes, a Parlamentary Ombudsman of Iceland, a dean at the Faculty of Law at The University of Iceland and his nine-year term as a Judge of the European Court of Human Rights began in 2013. Róbert was elected President of Section of the Court in May 2017. He has written extensively in the fields of human rights law, constitutional law, the interpretation of statutes and criminal procedure.

He has been elected for a three-year term and will take up his duties on 5 May 2019.

The Court is composed of one judge in respect of each of the 47 States to have ratified the European Convention on Human Rights. Judges work in five Sections from which Chambers of seven judges are constituted. The Court also sits as a Grand Chamber of 17 judges. The Court has two Vice-Presidents both of whom also preside over Sections, the other three Sections each having a Section President.

The European Court of Human Rights was set up in Strasbourg by the Council of Europe Member States in 1959 to deal with alleged violations of the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights.