Short answers, pulled from the story.
The European Court of Human Rights was established on the 21st of January 1959, when its first members were elected by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. It decided its first case, Lawless v. Ireland, in 1960.
The court is based in Strasbourg, France. It is the primary judicial body of the Council of Europe, which is distinct from the European Union.
There are 46 full-time judges, one for each contracting state. Each judge is elected by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe for a non-renewable nine-year term, and must retire at age 70.
The living instrument doctrine holds that the European Convention on Human Rights must be interpreted in light of present-day conditions rather than the original intent of its framers. The court applied this principle in Mamatkulov and Askarov v. Turkey (2008), and it has been used to expand protections related to discrimination and family rights.
Pending applications peaked at 151,600 in 2011. Reforms introduced under Protocol 14 reduced that number to 59,800 by 2019. The backlog grew rapidly after the fall of the Berlin Wall brought new member states and many more applicants into the system.
As of the end of 2016, Italy had 2,219 unimplemented judgments, Russia had 1,540, Turkey had 1,342, and Ukraine had 1,172. More than 3,200 of all non-implemented judgments concerned violations by security forces and poor detention conditions.