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Abstract This book addresses the question of the meaning and implications of subsidiarity qua foundational principle underpinning the entire European Convention on Human Rights system, that is, it offers a justification and explanation for the merely subsidiary role of the European Court of Human Rights. To do so, the book investigates into the history, rationale, and justification of the Convention’s subsidiarity principle and makes two principal arguments. First, related to theory, the book argues that the principle of the Court’s merely subsidiary role is justified because it serves the purpose of bringing democratic politics into the Convention system which—since it is situated at the international level— otherwise operated in a ‘democratic vacuum’. That is, to be democratically legitimate, the Convention system needs to develop bottom-up from the States’ democratic polities. Second, related to judicial practice, the book argues that the principle of the Court’s subsidiary role can thus explain and justify the relative lack of principled jurisprudence: the Court’s little principled jurisprudence is a prerequisite of the ongoing dialogue between the Court and the States about the Convention rights that ensures that the Convention law is firmly rooted within the democratic polities of the States. If the Court prematurely settled on strictly binding principles, it would deprive the States of their say in the development of the Convention law and suppress a process that is crucial for its democratic legitimation.