Gudmundur Andri Ástrádsson v. Iceland

The Icelandic Judiciary Act of 2016 called for creating a new 15-judge court of appeal. An evaluation committee was responsible for assessing judge candidates’ qualifications and providing the minister of justice (the minister) with a list of the most qualified candidates. The law required the minister to select judges from the most-qualified list unless (1) the minister proposed a candidate who satisfied the minimum requirements for a judgeship, and (2) the Althingi (i.e., the Icelandic parliament) accepted the minister’s proposal. For the first round of appointments to the new court, the minister was required to submit the entire slate of proposed judges to the Althingi for approval. When the minister proposed the 15 judge candidates for the new court, only 11 appeared on the committee’s most-qualified list. Nevertheless, the Althingi approved all proposed candidates, and Iceland’s president formally appointed the candidates to the court. In early 2017, Gudmundur Andri Ástrádsson (plaintiff) was convicted of road-traffic offenses in an Icelandic court. The new court of appeal heard Ástrádsson’s appeal and affirmed the conviction. Ástrádsson appealed, asserting that the court of appeal was not a legally established tribunal because of irregularities in one judge’s appointment. The judge was one of the minister’s proposed candidates who was not on the most-qualified list, and Ástrádssson claimed that the judge’s appointment arose from political side dealings between the minister and the judge’s husband. The Iceland Supreme Court upheld Ástrádsson’s conviction, finding that the judicial-appointment process was flawed but that the judges’ appointments had already become official. Ástrádsson filed an application against Iceland (defendant) in the European Court of Human Rights, asserting that Ástrádsson’s conviction had been upheld by a tribunal that was not established by law, in violation of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (the convention).