I would like to address the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) from the perspective of its past, its present and its future. Where did this institution come from and why? It was the first Court to provide the opportunity to an individual to sue his government before an international tribunal although the initial expectation was that it would be State parties that policed each other under the system established. Why such a radical innovation and to what purpose? Why should State parties create a stick with which they themselves might be beaten?