Due to the huge number of unmeritorious and repetitive cases and the gap
between the incoming applications and the outgoing judgments of the
Strasbourg Court, it ended up with a notorious backlog of 139,650 cases
in 2010. This phenomenon has resulted in a significant threat to the
right to individual petition, the main pillar of the ECHR system. It has
adversely impacted the efficiency of the ECtHR in terms of dealing with
cases and the effectiveness of human rights protection - a fact, which
brought the Strasbourg mechanism to being called 'a victim of its own
success'. This occurrence incited the creation of Protocols No. 14, 15
and 16. This work explores how they aim to manage the increasing
workload of the Strasbourg Court and its possibilities for
'constitutionalisation'.