On 26 January 2012 the European Court of Human Rights held its annual press conference. On this occasion, Sir Nicolas Bratza, the President of the Court, presented a summary of the Court’s activities and its statistics for 2011. Among others he said that the European governments must assume their part of the shared responsibility for the protection of human rights across the continent. Basically, that means that for the ECtHR to be able to cope with its case-load, which at 31 December 2011 stood at 151,600 cases, there is an urgent need for an overhaul of certain domestic laws and legal…