Keywords:
Council of Europe, European Court of Human Rights, selection of judges, judicial independence, legitimacy

Abstract:
This chapter explains the breadth and depth of the problems concerning the selection of judges of the ECtHR. It first highlights the importance of electing stellar judges to the Strasbourg bench for maintaining the legitimacy of the ECtHR. Then it briefly summarizes the good practices and recent improvements in the selection process. The core section of the chapter focuses on problems regarding the use of certain substantive criteria. More specifically it addresses the role of gender, the issue of the minimum and maximum ages of Strasbourg judges, their language skills, their knowledge of national law and expertise in public international law. Subsequently, the chapter discusses recent examples of elections that raised eyebrows across Europe and shows the politics behind them and suggests how to attract top candidates to Strasbourg.