Chapter 1 accounts for the goals and limits of the book and provides an overview of the content, uncertainty, and development of Article 13 in the Court's case law. It describes how Article 13 has developed into a proper right encompassing both procedural rights of access to justice and a substantive right to redress. It, also, explains how Article 13 not only grants a right for the individual, but is an important expression of the principle of subsidiarity upon which the system for the protection of human rights under the Convention is based. Yet, even though the case law concerning Article 13 is abundant, there is still considerable uncertainty concerning the content and scope of the obligations arising therefrom. Further, the case law reveals diverging opinions among judges as to how Article 13 could be further developed. This is connected to the Court's case load and the calls for the improvement of domestic remedies and a more subsidiary protection of human rights, most notably, in the process of reform of the Court and Convention system. How Article 13 could and should be a tool (or not) to mitigate such systemic concerns is a central part of the normative goal of the book.

The US Supreme Court has the power of certiorari. It may pick its fights. As a beneficial side effect, the court may allocate its resources, in particular the time and energy the justices spend on a case, to worthy causes. In economic parlance, this discretion makes the court more efficient. Efficiency comes at a political cost, though. This discretion also gives the court political power. It may direct its verdict to causes that are politically most relevant, or it may put an issue on the political agenda. Officially German constitutional law does not have certiorari. The Constitutional Court must decide each and every case that is brought. Yet over time the court has crafted a whole arsenal of more subtle measures for managing the case load. This paper shows that it uses these tools to engage in its version of allocating resources to cases. It investigates whether the ensuing efficiency gain comes at the cost of biasing the court’s jurisprudence. The paper exploits a new comprehensive data set. It consists of all (mostly only electronically) published cases the court has heard in 2011. While the data is rich, in many technical ways it is demanding. The paper uses a factor analysis to create a latent variable: to which degree has the court taken an individual case seriously? It then investigates whether observed indicators for bias explain this latent variable. Since the paper essentially investigates a single (independent) case, in statistical terms the findings are to be interpreted with caution. The paper can only aim at finding smoking guns.