What's Wrong with the European Convention on Human Rights?

The European Court of Human Rights faces a potentially fatal case overload crisis. But this is not the only problem confronting the European Convention on Human Rights. The underlying difficulty is the reluctance of the Strasbourg institutions, and others, to acknowledge that the Convention's main function is not to provide remedies for each deserving applicant. It is, rather, to promote convergence in the operation of public institutions at all levels of governance in Europe by articulating an abstract constitutional model which member states should then apply in their own domestic constitutional systems. This article seeks to make the case for "constitutionalization" and to explore the policy implications.