during the hearings of the "Lawless case", and the decisions of 14th November 1961 and 7th April 1961 have clarified the matter considerably.
Conclusion of the action
Once a case has been brought before the Court, it is still possible that a friendly settlement may be achieved, though this will only be accepted by the Court if it is based on respect for human rights; in special circumstances, the case may be discontinued or struck off the list, but only by decision of the Court and after consultation with the Com- mission. The normal conclusion of an action, however, is by judgment of the Court.
The Court decides whether or not there has been a violation of the Convention, and gives its reasons; the deci- sion of the Court may also, where appropriate, "afford just satisfaction to the injured party". The judgment is final and not subject to appeal. It is binding on the Parties to the case, which must take such action as is necessary to give effect to it; its execution is supervised by the Committee of Min- isters of the Council of Europe.
The first case before the Court was the Lawless case. The applicant had been detained without trial as a suspected member of the Irish Republican Army, after a series of breaches of the peace had occurred in the summer of 1957. The Irish Government had made a derogation under Article 15, on the ground that there existed "a public emergency threatening the life of the nation". The Court held in July 1961 that this derogation was justified and that the measures taken were "strictly required by the exigencies of the situa- tion"; in a separate judgment on the Irish Government's pre- liminary objections, it upheld the right of the Commission to obtain and communicate to the Court the views of the ap- plicant on the Commission's report, as well as any other views which the Commission might have obtained from the applicant in the course of the proceedings, even though an individual could not be an actual party to the proceedings before the Court.
The second case which came before the Court of Human Rights was the De Becker case. It concerned a provi-
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sion of the Belgian Penal Code under which De Becker- journalist who had been convicted in 1946 of collaborating with the enemy during the war-was deprived of the right to take part in the management, editorship, publication or distribution of a newspaper or any other publication. He com- plained that this violated Article 10 of the Convention, which guarantees the right to freedom of expression. After the Com- mission had drawn up its report and referred the matter to the Court, the Belgian law was amended in this respect and the Court then decided, on the basis of concordant submis- sions by the Commission and the Belgian Government, to strike the case off its list.
In June 1965 the Commission referred to the Court six cases "relating to certain aspects of the laws on the use of languages in education in Belgium". These raised the ques- tion of the compatibility of this legislation with Articles 8 and 14 of the Convention (right to respect for private and family life and the principle of non-discrimination) and with Article 2 of the First Protocol (right to instruction and right of parents to ensure the education of their children in con- formity with their own religion and philosophical convic- tions). Having affirmed its competence, which had been contested by the Belgian Government (Judgment of 9 Fe- bruary 1957), the Court delivered on 23 July 1968 its judg- ment on the merits. With the exception of one of the six points under discussion, the Court concluded that there was no violation of the Convention and the first Protocol.
Since 1966 the Court has considered five cases dealing with the duration of detention on remand which had been referred to it by the Commission as well as, for three of them, by the Austrian Government. In two of these cases, the Court found no violation of the rights guaranteed by the Convention (Wemhoff case against the Federal Republic of Germany : Judgment of 27 June 1968; and Matznetter case against the Republic of Austria: Judgment of 10 November 1969). In the other three cases, on the other hand, the Court found that the detention of the applicant had been longer than the "reason- able time" provided for in Article 5, paragraph 3, of the Con- vention (Neumeister case, Stögmüller case and Ringeisen case against the Republic of Austria: Judgments of 27 June 1968, 10 November 1969 and 16 July 1971). With a judg-
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