Advance Criminal Procedure

Resit 2019/2020 Exam paper topic

Instructions
Due to the coronavirus and the measures taken by the UM, I have decided to replace the resit,
which was an oral exam, with an individual paper that you have to write and submit. You
are required to write a paper as commentary to the ECtHR judgment Magnitskiy and others
v. Russia, Applications nos. 32631/09 and 53799/12, 27 August 2019. In a judgment
commentary (also known as ‘case note’), the author explains the ruling of the judgment and
comments critically on its merits and potential consequences.
Your paper should have the following distinct parts:
1) Identify the legal issues at hand and explain the ruling: you must explain which
questions and legal issues this judgment raises. Indicate which issues were at hand
and how they were answered by the ECtHR. So, you must briefly summarize the key
arguments of the court and its ruling.
2) Analyze the merits of the ruling and give opinion. This must be the more extensive
part of your paper, where you critically comment on the ruling. In your analysis
please consider the following issues (but not in this sequence necessarily, you can
blend those or follow different structure, or raise more issues):
 How this case relates to precedent of the ECtHR (does it go further, does it
come into conflict, does it confuse or clarify something, what precedent is
there?) – don’t only stay within the confines of our coursebook. Check for
more case law and do some research on this issue;
 How existing literature relates or adds to the issue (you can check online
journals to which we have access from the library, there is a lot of online
material);
 Assess the arguments of the court, the merits and the choices made. You are
expected to critically approach the ruling and arguments of the court;
 Possible impact on national law (generally by looking at whether it imposes
new standards and demands or specifically for your own system);
 Does it raise/lower ECHR standards;
 What is the added value of this judgment;
  Possible consequences for future cases.
Please focus mainly on violations of articles 6 and 5 ECHR and less on article 3 ECHR (to
the extent necessary to analyse article 6 and 5 violations). You do not need to comment on
the violation of article 2 ECHR.

The assignment has a maximum word limit of 3000 words (excluding footnotes, literature list
and front page). This limit is strictly applied, and any violation will affect your grade. Make
sure you pay attention to all parts of the assignment. Please use Times New Roman 12pt for
the text and 10pt for footnotes. Single spaced. Footnotes should be in a consistent style
(choose your own from the ones available). The front page should include the: title, name,
student number, word count date. You should include a literature list at the end.

Deadline and handing in

The deadline for submission is Friday 10 April 2020 at 18:00. The written assignments need
to be handed via the link as SafeAssignment at the Portal (check the portal for the link – there
will be an announcement). Make sure you comply with those requirements. Please note that
all assignments go through extensive plagiarism check.