Implementing Judgments: Making Court Victories Stick
Implementing Judgments: Making Court Victories Stick

Summary/Abstract: As a lawyer who has worked in the area of human rights for over 20 years, it has been an exhilarating and frustrating experience to lead the European Roma Rights Centre. Exhilarating to work in the most developed regional human rights system in the world and to practice law before a court that has helped set global standards in human rights jurisprudence. Frustrating because the morning after a court victory I am frequently left wondering just what we have won. For individual applicants, victories can be, at best, symbolic: they receive some money (usually a small amount) in non-pecuniary damages, but that is all. The money in no way compensates them for the actual damage they have suffered. In the case of D.H. and Others v The Czech Republic, for example, each applicant received 4,000 EUR. How does this compare to being falsely labelled as having a disability and relegated to substandard schools and to jobs that don’t require anything more than the most rudimentary education?

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