Professor Paul Lemmens elected judge to the European Court of Human Rights

We received the following press release from Intersentia, a legal publisher in Belgium, announcing that Professor Paul Lemmens has been elected to the European Court of Human Rights:

On April 24, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe elected Paul Lemmens (University of Leuven, Belgium)  as judge to the European Court of Human Rights in respect of Belgium.

Paul Lemmens was elected with an absolute majority of votes cast. His 9-year term of office will start on 13 September 2012.

Professor Lemmens (°1954) studied law at the Universities of Antwerp and Leuven. He obtained his law degree (“Licentiate in Laws”) in 1976 (magna cum laude) and an additional Master's Degree in Law at Northwestern University, Chicago (1978). In 1987, he successfully defended his PhD thesis at KU Leuven (Disputes about civil rights and obligations. The scope of application of Article 6 § 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights and Article 14 § 1 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.)

Paul Lemmens began his academic career as a research assistant in constitutional law (1976-1977) and civil procedure (1979-1986). He was subsequently appointed professor (1986) and in this capacity he has taught international human rights law (since 1986), civil procedure (1986-1995), administrative procedure (1995-1997) and constitutional law (1997-2008).

Currently Paul Lemmens is a part-time professor of international human rights law at KU Leuven, and the founder and director of the Faculty of Law's Institute for Human Rights. He is also a councillor (judge) at the Belgian Council of State (Supreme Administrative Court) (since 1994) and a member of the UNMIK Human Rights Advisory Panel in Kosovo (since 2007).

Paul Lemmens is also a member of the Council of Directors (since 1997) of the European Master's Programme in Human Rights and Democratisation, based in Venice. He was president of the Flemish Interuniversity Center for Human Rights (1992-2005), a member of the Commission for Legal Science of the Fund for Scientific Research Flanders (1995-2006) and a member of the Association for the Comparison of the Law of Belgium and the Netherlands. He has served as an expert for Belgium on the group of legal experts of the EU Fundamental Rights Agency (2008-2010).

In the past, Paul Lemmens was a member of the Brussels bar (1976-1984 and 1987-1994), the Belgian Commission for the Protection of Private Life (1987-1997) and the Board of the Center for Equality of Chances and Combat against Racism (1993-1994). He is a member of the National Commission for the Rights of the Child (since 2007).

He was a visiting professor at Northwestern University (1999), where he worked in close collaboration with Prof. Dr. Douglass Cassel. He has been an ad hoc judge in the European Court of Human Rights in four cases against Belgium (judgments handed down in 2000, 2002, 2003 and 2009).

(mew)