María Elósegui

María Elósegui Itxaso (born 7 December 1957) is a Spanish jurist, philosopher and Professor of Philosophy of Law at the Faculty of Law at the University of Zaragoza. She was appointed in January 2018 as a judge at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

Education Maria Elósegui graduated with a PhD from the University of Navarra in 1987 and followed up on her studies with a second master's in philosophy at the University of Glasgow in 1989. Following this, she studied law at the University of Sain-Louis, Brussels, Belgium from where she graduated with a MSc in 1994. Since 2018, she has been the representative of Spain in the European Court of Human Rights, succeeding Luis López Guerra.

Controversies In 2018, she partly dissented with the rest of the ruling judges at the ECHR and stated in her opinion that an administrative or civil sanction against the public protest of the Pussy Riot would not be an undue interference with the applicants' freedom of expression. Pussy Riot had performed a protest performance at the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow in 2012 against the return to power of Vladimir Putin. In her separate opinion, Elósegui concurred with the majority of judges that there had been several violations of the ECHR based on the Internet ban of the video, and that the criminal sanction applied to the Pussy Riot was excessive.

Publications During her career, she published numerous books concerning the rule of law, with the exception of one about Peine del Viento. a well known sculpture in San Sebastian. Maria Elosegui also wrote a book about the sculpture to which her father collaborated as an engineer.