Since the inception of the new Court in November 1998, a process has been in place for selecting judgments and decisions of particular importance (also referred to as 'key cases'). Of these selected cases, those delivered until 2015 were published in the Reports of Judgments and Decisions (ECHR series) and online, and those for the years 2016 onwards are published online only.

The selected cases can be found by referring either to the annual lists or to the indexes of the Reports, or by selecting 'Key cases' under the 'Importance' filter in the HUDOC database.