Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights: A Practitioner’s Handbook 1.4.2 The Sections and the Chambers As mentioned above, the Court is divided into five Sections. Each judge is a member of a Section. The Sections, which are set up by the Plenary Court for a period of three years, are geographically and gender balanced and they reflect the different legal systems of the Contracting Parties.24 Each Section has its own President, assisted or replaced where necessary, by a Vice President. Section Presidents are elected by the Plenary Court whereas Vice Presidents are elected by the Sections themselves.25 However, a case brought before a Section is not dealt with by the full Section but by a Chamber of seven judges formed from among the judges in the Section.26 Each Chamber includes the Section President and the national judge concerned. The other five members of the Chamber are designated from among the remaining members of the Section. The remaining judges who are not designated as members of the Chamber sit in the case as substitute judges. Where possible – depending on the case load of the Section – an application introduced against a particular Contracting Party will be assigned to the Section which includes among its members the judge elected in respect of that Contracting Party, i.e. the national judge. If such a course of action has not been taken, the national judge in question sits as an ex officio member of the Chamber.27 In the performance of its duties, each Section is assisted by a senior member of the Registry, i.e. the Section Registrar. Section Registrars are assisted by Deputy Section Registrars. Sections that deal with Inter-State cases28 and cases lodged by individuals that are not clearly inadmissible. They meet once a week to deliberate on the cases assigned to them. Section deliberations are confidential and are not attended by anyone other than the judges and members of the Registry. Protocol 14 also established a new filtering section complementing the five existing sections. The filtering section is made up of the judges appointed as single judges and the Registry rapporteurs who have been appointed by the President of 24 25 26 27 28 26 Rule 25 § 2 of the Rules of Court. For the compositions of the five Sections see: http://www.echr. coe.int/Pages/home.aspx?p=court/judges&c= (last visited 23 July 2014). Rule 8 §§ 1–2 of the Rules of Court. See also Rule 26 of the Rules of Court. Rule 26 § 1 (a) of the Rules of Court. I.e. cases introduced by a Contracting Party against another Contracting Party pursuant to Article 33 of the Convention. Such applications are very rare; at the time of writing, there had only been 20 such applications.