Judges
Prior to the adoption of Protocol no.14, judges were elected for a six-year term, with the option of renewal. Now judges are elected for a non-renewable nine year term. The number of full-time judges sitting in the Court is equal to that of the contracting states to the European Convention on Human Rights. The Convention requires that judges are of high moral character and to have qualifications suitable for high judicial office, or be a jurisconsult of recognised competence. Judges are elected by majority vote in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe from the three candidates each contracting state nominates. Judges are elected whenever a sitting judge's term has expired or when a new states accedes to the Covenant. Judges must retire at the age of 70, but may hold office until a new judge is elected or the cases in which they sit have come to an end. The judges perform their duties in an individual capacity and have no institutional or other ties with the contracting state on behalf of whom they were elected. To ensure the independence of the Court judges are not allowed to participate in activity that may compromise the Court's independence. They can only be dismissed from office if the other judges decide, by two-thirds majority, that the judge has ceased to fulfill the required conditions. Judges are, for the duration of their term, beneficiaries of the privileges and immunities provided in Article 4 of the Statute of the Council of Europe.
Read more about this topic: European Court Of Human Rights
Famous quotes containing the word judges:
“The judges did the punishing, the criminals paid for their crimes and I, free of responsibilities, removed from judgment and from punishment, I ruled, freely, in an edenic light.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“The World is not enough used to this way of writing, to the moment. It knows not that in the minutiae lie often the unfoldings of the Story, as well as of the heart; and judges of an action undecided, as if it were absolutely decided.”
—Samuel Richardson (1689–1761)
“The world, the wise world, that never is wrong itself, judges always by events. And if he should use me ill, then I shall be blamed for trusting him: if well, O then I did right, to be sure!—But how would my censurers act in my case, before the event justifies or condemns the action, is the question.”
—Samuel Richardson (1689–1761)