The European Court of Human Rights is based in the French city of Strasbourg
David Cameron will say it is the "right moment" to reform the European Court of Human Rights in a speech in Strasbourg later.
The prime minister will say the court should not "undermine its own reputation by going over national decisions where it does not need to".
He will urge it to focus on "the most serious violations of human rights" and "not act as a small claims court".
The European court has a backlog of more than 150,000 cases.
The UK is currently president of the Council of Europe and in his speech to its Parliamentary Assembly on Wednesday afternoon, Mr Cameron will promise to use the remaining three months of its term to press for change.
'British heart'The UK has clashed with the European court over a number of issues, including the deportation of criminals or suspected criminals.
Most recently, Strasbourg upheld a challenge by radical preacher Abu Qatada that deporting him from the UK to Jordan would breach his human rights.
Westminster is also embroiled in an ongoing row with the court over voting rights for prisoners, and has refused to comply with a ruling which says inmates should be able to take part in elections.
In his speech, Mr Cameron will insist that a commitment to human rights "runs deep in the British heart and long in British history", and point to the intervention in Libya as an example of that.
But he will say the Court of Human Rights "should not be swamped with an endless backlog of cases".
"The court should ensure that the right to individual petition counts. It should not act as a small claims court.
"And the court should hold us all to account. It should not undermine its own reputation by going over national decisions where it does not need to."
The PM will say the UK wants to achieve consensus between countries on "strengthening subsidiarity - the principle that where possible, final decisions should be made nationally".
"For the sake of the 800 million people the court serves, we need to reform it so that it is true to its original purpose.
"Already 47 members are agreed on this, and great work has been done. Now we would like to use our chairmanship to help progress that work.
'Sustained attack'"This is the right moment for reform - reforms that are practical, sensible and that enhance the reputation of the court."
Ahead of the speech, the court's top judge, Sir Nicolas Bratza QC, said "the criticism relating to interference" in UK affairs was "simply not borne out by the facts".
"It is disappointing to hear senior British politicians lending their voices to criticisms more frequently heard in the popular press, often based on a misunderstanding of the court's role and history, and of the legal issues at stake," he wrote in the Independent newspaper.
He said it was "particularly unfortunate" that the prisoner voting issue "has been used as the springboard for a sustained attack on the court and has led to repeated calls for the granting of powers of Parliament to override judgements of the court against the UK, and even for the withdrawal of the UK from the [Human Rights] convention".
The court's case backlog is coming down, but still stands at almost 160,000 - many of which are inadmissible. Some cases take 25 months before they are even considered.
The UK believes the majority of these could be handled at national level, leaving Strasbourg free to focus its resources on things like torture and extra-judicial killings.
Conservative ministers have argued that the European Convention on Human Rights should be scrapped and replaced with a UK Bill of Rights.
But their Liberal Democrat coalition partners say the convention must stay - although Nick Clegg is said to back the bid for reform of the court.
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