and that in the same manner, therefore, the Court can only interpret a point
which is part of the operative provisions of the judgment in question.
The operative provisions of the judgment of 21 June 2013
follows: « The Court declares this application inadmissible
Article 6(2) of the
(paragraph 41).
Protocol,
read
with
Article
56
(5)
provides as
in terms of
of the
Charter »
The Applicant’s request for the interpretation of Article 28(1) of the Protocol
and Rule 59(2) of the Rules mentioned above is in no way related to these
operative provisions which have to do with the inadmissibility of the
application for failure to exhaust local remedies. It is even strictly unrelated
to the reasons of the judgment. It concerns an issue which is outside the
scope of the judgment.
Besides, the Court itself had just admitted this in one of the preceding
paragraphs of its judgment where it declared that « [I]he eight ‘points’
posed by the Applicant can never be points for interpretation as they do not
relate to the operative paragraphs
of the judgment» (paragraph 7).
7. The Court justifies its decision to consider this point
affirmation it just made, in saying that there was a need
in spite of the
to remove any
doubt on the issue. This justification is however not convincing. The same
need to remove any doubt could also be felt in relation to the six other
points raised by the Applicant in his application for interpretation which the
Court however decided to ignore; and the Court also failed to explain why
the interpretation of Article 28(1) and Rule 59(2) had to be treated
differently from the other points. The selection of points which the Court did
not have to interpret, but which it nevertheless interpreted, necessarily
appears to be arbitrary.
8. Further, parts of the judgment in which the Court gives its interpretation
of Article 28(1) of the Protocol and Rule 59(2) of the Rules do not even
constitute obiter dicta.
It is generally acknowledged
judgment. Obiter dictum is
that a judge may include obiter dicta in his
a Latin expression which means ‘said in
Ze
(we