The present chapter is a first of three chapters which undertake an analytical inquiry into the Court's positive obligations case law, which will serve as a basis for the final chapters which are more critical and normative in nature. In this chapter, I will start this inquiry by mapping the Court's positive obligations case law using a number of broad analytical classifications that have been identified in the literature, in order to provide an overview of the types of obligations recognised by the Court as well as the areas of the case law in which the Court has done so. The present chapter is not meant to give an exhaustive descriptive account of the Court's positive obligations jurisprudence, but rather aims to give an analytical overview of the kinds of positive obligations recognised by the Court. For this reason, the categories within these typologies will not be illustrated with as many examples as possible but by means of notable examples from the Court's case law, where possible with a preference for the most authoritative ones. This chapter introduces the reader to the diversity that exists within the Court's positive obligation jurisprudence and serves as a basis for further discussion in the subsequent chapters, since differences in legal methodology and legal reasoning within the Court's positive obligations case law often arise along the boundaries of such typologies.

Before elaborating on those typologies, it is worthwhile mentioning a first important categorisation attempt. Starmer identified five broad positive obligations under the Convention:

With his categorisation, Starmer has succeeded in covering most areas of the Court's positive obligations case law, and therefore his categorisation is a useful starting point for the present discussion. However, in developing his categorisation Starmer seemed to have been more concerned with clustering cases for the purpose of providing a descriptive account of positive obligations, rather than with developing “neat” analytical distinctions.