The precedential nature of European Court of Human Rights decisions and their place in the domestic legal system

This article is devoted to a comprehensive study of the precedential nature of European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) decisions and determining their place in the domestic legal system. The author argues that the ECHR’s law enforcement practice is increasingly influencing the transformation of the legal systems of the Roman-Germanic legal family, in particular Ukraine, towards the gradual recognition of judicial precedent as a full-fledged source of law. The article provides a detailed analysis of the legal nature of ECHR acts, in particular establishing that not all decisions of the Court have equal legal significance. It proposes dividing the acts into interim and final decisions, of which only some are included. Particular attention is paid to the normative influence of ECHR decisions, which, although adopted in the context of specific disputes, formulate general legal standards that must be taken into account by national courts, regardless of the participation of a particular state in the case. In this context, it is argued that the decisions of the ECHR go beyond the ordinary interpretation of the provisions of the Convention, acquiring the character of autonomous sources of law. The author supports the concept of international judicial precedent, within which the decisions of the ECHR are considered not only as an instrument for interpreting the provisions of international law, but as an independent normative source with a precedent nature. The author examines theoretical problems of implementing the ECHR’s practice in the Ukrainian legal system, including insufficient access to the Court’s decisions, limited official publication, lack of high-quality translations, and incorrect application of precedents in practice. The author proposes a set of specific measures to address these problems: the creation of a unified national database of ECHR practice with filtering and search tools; improvement of mechanisms for the publication and translation of decisions; and improvement of the legal education and qualifications of judges and lawyers in the field of European law. The conclusions emphasize that recognizing ECHR decisions as a source of law is not only a legal obligation of Ukraine as a state party to the Convention, but also a logical consequence of the transformation of the legal system aimed at integration into the pan-European legal space. Thus, the case law of the ECHR is already shaping a new paradigm of Ukrainian justice based on the principles of predictability, unity, respect for human rights, and the rule of law.