Judges and scholars have long debated whether the European Court of Human Rights (the ECtHR or the Court) can only expand, never diminish, human rights protections in Europe. Recent studies have found that political backlashes and national-level restrictions have influenced ECtHR case law. However, analysing whether the ECtHR is shifting in a regressive direction faces an empirical challenge: How can we observe whether the Court is limiting rights over time if it has never expressly overturned a prior judgment in a way that favours the government? We gain traction on this question by analysing all separate and minority opinions of the ECtHR Grand Chamber between 1998 and 2018. We focus on opinions asserting that the Grand Chamber has tacitly overturned prior rulings or settled doctrine in a way that favours the respondent state, which we label as ‘walking back dissents’. We find that walking back dissents have become significantly more common in the last decade, revealing that some members of the ECtHR themselves believe that the Grand Chamber is increasingly overturning prior judgments in a regressive direction.

中文翻译：

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在欧洲走人权？

法官和学者长期以来一直在争论欧洲人权法院（欧洲人权法院或法院）是否只能扩大而不是削弱欧洲的人权保护。最近的研究发现，政治反弹和国家层面的限制影响了ECtHR判例法。但是，分析ECtHR是否朝着回归的方向转变面临着经验上的挑战：如果法院从未以有利于政府的方式明确推翻先前的判决，那么我们如何观察法院是否正在随着时间限制权利？我们通过分析1998年至2018年ECtHR大商会的所有单独和少数派意见，来解决这个问题。我们重点关注那些主张大商会默许推翻先前裁定或解决原则的主张，以有利于被告国的方式，我们称之为“反对异议”。我们发现，在过去的十年中，反对意见的异议已经变得越来越普遍，这表明欧洲人权法院的一些成员本人相信大会议厅正在朝着回归的方向推翻先前的判断。