Half of the judges serving in the hated European Court of Human Rights do not have experience adjudicating in a lower court, while 11 have no courtroom experience at all.
Of the Court’s 46 judges, 23 are without lower court experience and many have backgrounds in academia and teaching, according to GB News.
Gabriele Kucsko-Stadlmayer, who has been on the Court since 2015, has no experience whatsoever as a lawyer or a judge. Her experience, as listed on the ECHR website, is almost exclusively in academia.
Meanwhile the President of the ECHR, Síofra O’Leary, who has also been a judge for the Court since 2015, has no track record on her CV of being a judge or lawyer in any other court prior to taking her post in Strasbourg.
Ms O’Leary was a Fellow at Cambridge University, a visiting professor at the College of Europe in Bruges and prior to joining the ECHR she was a Head of Unit at the Court of Justice of the European Union.
Following the broadcaster’s findings, former Home Office minister, Sarah Dines MP told GB News: “The European Court of Human Rights is a sham. It bears no resemblance whatsoever to the court the United Kingdom signed up to in the 1950s.
“It is best described as a human rights NGO masquerading as a court, staffed and run by human rights activists using this country to further woke policies that would never receive a democratic mandate.”
Former Immigration Minister Kevin Foster added: “It is stunning to see this lack of judicial experience from a court which too often interferes with decisions made by UK Judges with many years of experience.
“It points to why the legitimacy of this court is often questioned.”
A spokesman for the ECHR said: “Under Article 21(1) of the European Convention on Human Rights, judges must be of high moral character and either possess the qualifications required for appointment to high judicial office or be jurisconsults of recognised competence.
“The latter category may include legal practitioners, senior academic lawyers, legal advisers or other government officials with relevant experience.
“The Court does not comment on a judge’s curriculum vitae.”
