This book focuses on a series of paradigmatic judgments through which the Court has sketched the contours of the rights and responsibilities of legal fatherhood, relying particularly on the right to respect for private and family life under Article 8, taken alone or in conjunction with Article 14. In the ECtHR jurisprudence, fatherhood is a subject that cuts across a variety of different legal issues and, therefore, takes shape across disparate contexts. With some exceptions, however, the applicant tends to be an unconventional (potential) father who is denied the allocation of paternal status or rights as a result of national measures that are premised on a conventional understanding of fatherhood.