Robert Spano

President of the Board of Patrons and former President of the European Court of Human Rights

Robert Spano, former President of the European Court of Human Rights, was elected to the Court in 2013 as the judge in respect of Iceland. He served as Section President from May 2017, Vice-President of the Court from May 2019, and President of the Court from May 2020 until 31 October 2022. Before taking up his judicial office he served as Parliamentary Ombudsman of Iceland from 2009-2010 and again in 2013. He served as Dean of the Faculty of Law, University of Iceland, from 2010-2013, and was appointed professor of law in 2006. He was chairman of the Standing Committee of Experts in Criminal Law in the Icelandic Ministry of Justice from 2003-2009 and from 2011-2013. He was also the Icelandic delegate to the European Committee on Crime Problems and an Independent Expert to the Lanzarote Committee of the Council of Europe. He is a graduate of the University of Iceland and of the University of Oxford.

Siofra O’Leary

President of the European Court of Human Rights

Síofra O’Leary, President of the European Court of Human Rights, is the judge elected in respect of Ireland and is the first woman to hold the position of President of the Strasbourg Court. Appointed in 2015, she served as the President of the Fifth Section from January 2020 and as the Vice-President of the Court from January until October 2022. Prior to joining the European Court of Human Rights, Judge O’Leary worked for almost two decades at the Court of Justice of the European Union in judicial and administrative capacities. In parallel to her work at both European courts, Judge O’Leary is a Visiting Professor at the College of Europe in Bruges. She served on the Editorial Board of the Common Market Law Review and is now a member of both its Advisory Board and the Board of the Irish Centre for European Law and a member of the Society of Legal Scholars. In 2016 she was elected an Honorary Bencher of the Honorable Society of King’s Inns.

A graduate of University College Dublin (BCL) and a postgraduate of the European University Institute (PhD), Judge O’Leary was previously the Assistant Director for the Centre of European Legal Studies at the University of Cambridge, a Fellow of Emmanuel College, a Visiting Fellow at the Faculty of Law, University College Dublin, a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Cádiz, Spain and a Research Associate at the Institute for Public Policy Research in London. She has published extensively in academic journals and legal monographs on the protection of fundamental rights in EU law and under the ECHR, EU employment law, the free movement of persons and services and EU citizenship generally.

Ivana Jelic

Judge on the European Court of Human Rights

Ivana Jelić is judge of the European Court of Human Rights elected in respect of Montenegro in 2018. She is a member of Legal Sciences Committee of Montenegrin Academy of Sciences and Arts, as of 2015. She is a member of the Senate of the Montenegrin Association of Lawyers, as of 2018. Before joining the Court, she was employed as an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Montenegro. She served as a Vice President and a member of the UN Human Rights Committee (2015-2018). She also served as an independent expert in different bodies of the Council of Europe (2007-2018), inter alia, as a Gender Rapporteur and the 2nd Vice Chair of the Advisory Committee on the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (2012-2016). She studied law at the University of Montenegro, University of Belgrade, Berkeley Law School of the UC Berkeley and Columbia Law School in New York, as a JFDP fellow. She holds LL.M (2004) and PhD (2007) degrees in public international law, Belgrade Law School, University of Belgrade, Serbia.

In parallel to her work at the University and the Court, Judge Jelić was a Distinguished Visiting Professor – Mercator Fellow at Free University of Berlin (2016/2017) and has been a Visiting Professor at the Europa- Institut of the University of Saarland, as of 2019. She serves on the Advisory Board of the Israel Law Review and Advisory Editor of the Balkan Yearbook of European and International Law. She has published extensively in academic journals and monographs on the international protection of fundamental rights under the ECHR and ICCPR, rule of law, gender equality and minority rights.

Mirjana Lazarova Trajkovska

Judge on the Supreme Court of the Republic of North Macedonia

Mirjana Lazarova Trajkovska was elected to the Supreme Court of the Republic of North Macedonia in March 2020. From February 2008- February 2017, she was Judge at the European Court of Human Rights. From November 2015 – February 2017, she was President of the First Section of the European Court of Human Rights. From 2003 to 2008 she was a Judge of the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Macedonia. From 2001- 2003, she was the Head of Department on Human Rights at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. From 2002 to 2003 she was President of the State Election Commission in the Republic of Macedonia. In May 2018, she was visiting Professor of Human Rights at the Renmin University of China in Beijing. In 2017, she was a visiting fellow to the Faculty of Law at the University of Birmingham, UK and Faculty of Law at the Catholic University in Lille, France.

She was a Member of the European Commission for democracy through law (Venice Commission). She was a Deputy Chair of the Council of Democratic Elections, A member of the Steering Committee on Human Rights at the Council of Europe; and a member of the Working group of the COE Committee of Experts on Nationality (CJ-NA-GT) working on the Convention on the avoidance of statelessness in relation to State Succession.

Ledi Bianku

Judge on the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina

Ledi Bianku holds the office of international judge of the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina. He is also, since 2018, an associate Professor at the University of Strasbourg. From 2008-2019 he was a Judge at the European Court of Human Rights in respect of Albania. He served previously as member of the European Commission for democracy through law (Venice Commission) from 2006-2008. He also chaired the National Audio-visual Authority from 2006-2007. He taught Public International Law, EU law and Human Rights law at the Tirana Law Faculty and the Albanian School of Magistrates from 1993-2007. He also served as legal advisor for various national and international bodies, and is currently a member of the Ethics Committee of the Prince Albert II Foundation. Mr. Bianku is a graduate from Tirana University and College of Europe in Bruges.