The present article looks back at the forms and temporality of the emergence of a scientific interest in European human rights law subsequent to the adoption of the European Convention on Human Rights (1950). It shows how a “Convention world” took shape around the Strasbourg institutions (judges of the Court and higher civil servants of the Council of Europe) that quickly got involved in promoting European human rights by means of producing a scholarly discourse and disseminating it throughout academic journals and congresses. It then turns to the variety of paths along which European human rights was received in different national settings, and stresses the gap that appears between this Strasbourg-based transnational academic agenda and national legal scholarship(s) pertaining to human rights law.