Episode eight: The inconsistent success of migrant human rights cases in the 1990s

In this episode I discuss how the growing success of some migrants at the European Court of Human Rights saw the emergence of a case law “lottery” in the 1990s.

[podcast]https://blogs.brighton.ac.uk/humanrights/files/2015/03/hrm8_the_inconsistent_success_of_migrant_human_rights_cases_in_the_1990s-1cmz8or.mp3[/podcast]

We consider the case of Berrehab about a Moroccan man who was married to a Dutch woman and who lived in the Netherlands. When the couple separated, the authorities decided to expel him despite the fact that he was seeing his daughter four times a week.

The family applied to the European Court of Human Rights and the Court found a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights in 1988. This was a first in a migrant case.

The Berrehab judgment marked a turning point as a number of verdicts deciding that expulsion breached the right to family life followed. Just a few years down the line, however, most migrants started to lose again.

This led to the case law being characterised as a lottery.

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