The case-law of the Human Rights Chamber

At the beginning, the Human Rights Chamber, unlike the Constitutional Court, did not take a clear position on the issue as to whether it was competent to review the Constitutional Court’s decisions. In the Sijarić Case,³²⁷⁵ the Human Rights Chamber did not accept to decide the case, involving the same parties and the same request, which had previously been dealt with by the Constitutional Court. In the reasoning of its decision, the Human Rights Chamber stated that the Constitutional Court’s jurisdiction under Article VI.3(b) of the BiH Constitution and its own jurisdiction under Annex 6 overlapped in that case. Neither the BiH Constitution nor Annex 6, as stated by the Human Rights Chamber, provide for a hierarchy of these institutions. Moreover, the relation between the matters over which these two institutions have jurisdiction is in no way regulated. Finally, the Constitutional Court itself initiated its competence to review the decisions of the Human Rights Chamber.

It is obvious that here the Human Rights Chamber did not rely on any of the criteria under Article VIII.2 of Annex 6 to accept the case. Instead, the Human Rights Chamber pointed out that the list provided for in that Article was not final, so that it had recourse to the possibility of accepting the complaints or not accepting them at its own discretion.³²⁷⁶ The Human Rights Chamber first confirmed this jurisprudence in its subsequent decisions.³²⁷⁷ However, at a later point the jurisprudence of the Human Rights Chamber and the Human Rights Commission within the BiH Constitutional Court came closer to the jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court. In cases where the Constitutional Court dealt only with admissibility, the Human Rights Chamber and the Human Rights Commission within the BiH Constitutional Court declared themselves competent to decide the same matter unless the Constitutional Court considered the case as manifestly ill-founded³²⁷⁸ or if the Constitutional Court was ratione materiae incompetent, since the possibilities of filing appeals under Annexes 4 and 6 overlap, so that the applicant would have the same legal protection before the Human Rights Commission within the BiH Constitutional Court and before the Constitutional Court.³²⁷⁹ Where it happened that the same case was received at the same time by both institutions, the Human Rights Commission within the BiH Constitutional Court did not take into account the moment of filing the application but only the answer to the question whether the Constitutional Court has already decided the same matter.³²⁸⁰