The master's thesis deals with the approach of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) to inadmissible (or illegal) evidence. The latter is based on respect for the principle of subsidiarity and the fourth instance doctrine, derived from it, which leads the ECtHR to reject, at a principled level, the admissibility of inadmissible evidence. This means that, in the event of an alleged violation of the right to a fair trial under Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) due to the use of inadmissible evidence, the ECtHR does not assess the impact of the use of such evidence on the fairness of the proceedings, but respects the decisions of the national courts on the admissibility of individual pieces of evidence and carries out an overall fairness test which focuses only on violations of the procedural rights of the accused. Therefore, according to the current case law of the ECtHR, the right to a fair trial does not preclude the use of inadmissible evidence. In my view, the ECtHR's established approach is questionable from a number of points of view - respect for the principle of effectiveness, the rule of law, the principle of legal certainty, the protection of judicial integrity, the aspect of legitimacy, etc. The purpose of this Master's thesis is therefore to present in more detail the current practice of the ECtHR in this area, to analyse the problems it raises and to present possible alternative solutions to the current approach.
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