Chapter 9 analyzes three requirements and principles that are overarching to access to justice and redress. First, the remedy must provide the applicant with a personal right. This implies that it does not suffice that the national authority has supervisory or discretionary power to look at the case and provide redress and that it cannot be left solely in the hands of the State to set the remedy in motion. Second, how an aggregate of remedies may satisfy Article 13. This principle has been criticized. However, as the chapter illustrates, an aggregate of remedies may, also, enhance the effectiveness of the remedial task. Further, the chapter demonstrates how the Court, currently, applies the requirement in a stricter manner. Third, how the remedy must be effective not only in theory but also in practice. Also this requirement has, in recent years, been applied in a stricter manner by the Court. But it remains uncertain whether the remedy needs to be generally ineffective, for example, because of systemic problems, or to what extent more isolated acts or omissions, also, may render the remedy ineffective in practice.

Chapter 8 accounts for factors explicitly emphasized in the Court's case law which may influence the relative standard of effectiveness arising under Article 13. Indeed, States have a margin of appreciation which provides for different possibilites for assuring effective remedies in practice, for example, in penal, civil, constitutional or administrative proceedings. However, the proceedings must satisfy the minimum requirements, of access to justice and redress. These requirements may be influced by, for example, the character and degree of the violation, the context in which the remedies operate, including whether the remedial problems stems from a systemic problem and the personal situation of the applicant. Such factors may, in practice, lead to the conclusion that only a limited selection of remedies, or even only one remedy, may be effective.

Brooke Melton (GM), Michelle Pfeleger (Yasmin/Yaz), Linda Isner (Vioxx), Gene Weeks (Vioxx), Trudy Thomas (Kugel Mesh), Erika Langhart (NuvaRing), and David Foscue (Zimmer) are but a handful of the faces behind multidistrict litigation statistics. Stories like theirs lurk within many of the more than 312,500 actions included in this book’s dataset. In each case, it would be easy to pin blame on the lawyers, the FDA, the company, or the doctors. But targeting only one paints an incomplete picture and misses the point: there are problems with each that affect, reflect, and amplify failings elsewhere.