This book, designed to mark the Court’s fiftieth anniversary in 2009 and the Convention’s sixtieth in 2010, does not purport to be a full and complete history of the institution. Nor is it a treatise on the Court’s procedure and case-law, on which many publications already exist.
Rather, being for the general reader wishing to increase his or her knowledge of the Court as an institution, it steers a course between an academic commentary and a purely introductory guide. It groups a variety of individual contributions, on topics generally selected by the authors themselves, round a skeleton retracing the main relevant events over the last half-century.