Chapter 2 turns to the period directly after ratification, from 1954 to 1962, and shows how this was a remarkable lively period.

It makes two distinct claims. First, it contests the pervasive image that the Convention was ‘asleep’ in the domestic legal context. Rather, the Convention was immediately tried and tested and entered the domestic context in a flurry of heated activity, as litigants and other players set out their campaigns to define what the Convention would mean.

Second, it argues that the restrictive policy of the European Commission of Human Rights was a conscious legal strategy. Following the experiences of the Dutch member of the Commission and the national interaction with the European institutions, it can be argued how restraint was indeed part of a conscious effort to let states accept the right of individual petition. Simultaneously, however, the European Court embarked on campaigns to make the Court relevant.

The chapter ends in 1962 with failure on both the domestic and the European levels to make the Convention into something more than a distant document. These failures were essential in setting the stage for the Convention’s perceived legal irrelevance in the following two decades.