Welcome to the anti-penultimate cells seminar after this term.

I'm very pleased to introduce to you, Judge Spielman, the Luxembourg judge at the European Court of Human Rights and the President of a Section.

He is a Cambridge alumnus and a student of Fitz and a loyal and frequent return to Cambridge.

We're particularly glad to having here today to talk to us about the margin of appreciation.

David Cameron is all for the marks of appreciation.

If any of you read The Guardian this morning morning you'll see leaked the government's tough proposals to claw back powers from Strasbourg,

which are going to be proposed.

The wonderful idea that Strasbourg couldn't have any competence when a National Supreme Court has ruled upon that time,

which you might have thought rather destroy the object of the end of the crime.

But anyway, it's not up for me to talk about it just to introduce the speaker.

Over to you.

Mr. Steven.

Okay, thank you so much, Professor Spencer, for introducing me. I'm very happy, of course, to be back in Cambridge. I studied here many years ago, and I studied in the old school. So at my time, this nice faculty building did not exist. Now, it is well known that under Article 32 of the Convention,

the court's jurisdiction extends to all matters concerning the interpretation and application

of the Convention and the Protocols there too. It was the intention of the states to make the court the sole

interpreter of this instrument whenever it was called upon. So prior to the lodging

of an application, the rights guaranteed by the Convention have or have not been applied by

domestic authorities and given that the court can be seized of a case only after the exhaustion of domestic

remedies, it will inevitably take a retrospective look at a case in assessing whether or not

the convention has been breached. I'm talking today about the domestic margin of appreciation. Now, the domestic

margin of appreciation is a notion which refers to the room for maneuver, that the European

court is prepared to accord national authorities in fulfilling their obligations under the European Convention.

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