Political rights are rights which cultivate duality : duality between subjectivity and objectivity, duality between individual and collective rights. These totally ambivalent rights significantly influence the type of political regime and henceforth the global protection of human rights. Missing in the text signed at Rome in 1950, the right to free elections made a noteworthy appearance in the European judicial order concerning the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms with the passing of the first additional protocol, article 3, in 1952. On the basis of this original provision linked to the rights of political nature – freedom of opinion and expression, freedom of peaceful assembly and association with others – the European judge of human rights has progressively built a real political and democratic order which is distinct from the European public order. This part of the litigation thus confronts the democratic and constitutional political issues to an order which is justified by the protection of human rights and the preeminence of law. As the European Court of Human Rights is the main cog of a daring mecanism of supranational control over the enforcement of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, the Court’s caselaw now carries a vast project of change and transformation of the national political orders. It has created a real European political model which has enabled Article 3 of Protocol n°1 to produce unsuspected effects in its origin, if this article is set within the prospect of the other provisions of the Convention and the rights of political nature
