Navigating the right to a fair trial for vulnerable suspects pre-trial: A legal and psychological critique of the Strasbourg jurisprudence

Cusack, Alan and Dehaghani, Roxanna ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7400-9433 2025. Navigating the right to a fair trial for vulnerable suspects pre-trial: A legal and psychological critique of the Strasbourg jurisprudence. Human Rights Law Review Item availability restricted.

	PDF (Provisional file) - Accepted Post-Print Version Download (0B)
	PDF - Accepted Post-Print Version Restricted to Repository staff only Download (432kB)

Abstract

Pre-trial criminal processes can prove challenging for suspects with intellectual and psychosocial disabilities. In recognition of this, the European Court of Human Rights has emphasised the importance of individualised assessments of vulnerability under Article 6. Yet, recent Strasbourg jurisprudence reveals a juridical willingness to define vulnerability narrowly with significant implications. This article analyses this jurisprudence to excavate the framing of vulnerability vis-à-vis fair trial rights during pre-trial processes. Drawing upon a corpus of psychology and law literature, as well as the dissenting judgment in Hasáliková, it critiques the narrow formulation of vulnerability that has taken hold in Strasbourg, and interrogates the Court’s ostensible faith in the safeguarding capacity of lawyers. By using Ireland’s weak pre-trial procedural framework as heuristic lens through which the shortcomings of this approach can be understood, it calls for a more generous conceptualisation of vulnerability that is sensitive to the ontological and structural dimensions at play.

Item Type:	Article
Status:	In Press
Schools:	Schools > Law
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
ISSN:	1461-7781
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	5 March 2025
Date of Acceptance:	23 February 2025
Last Modified:	05 Mar 2025 12:45
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/176571

Actions (repository staff only)

Edit Item