Courts Resisting Courts: Lessons from the Inter-American Court’s Struggle to Enforce Human Rights

Courts Resisting Courts explores a critical tension in international law: the relationship between international and national courts. Leading theorists assume that autonomous national courts heighten compliance with international human rights regimes. This article challenges this orthodoxy. It focuses on the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, an international court unique in that it orders far-reaching, innovative remedies that invoke action not only by the State\u27s executive, but also the legislature and local courts. Original data reveals that national courts, more than any other branch of government, shirk the Court\u27s rulings. This article turns this insight into a prescription for gaining greater compliance: International human rights courts need to directly engage national justice systems, cultivating them into compliant partners. This argument is relevant not only to the Inter-American Court, but to courts with jurisdiction over human rights across the globe

Reforming the State from Afar: Structural Reform Litigation at the Human Rights Courts

During the 1950s and 1960s, landmark rulings ordering school desegregation, prison reform, and other structural changes transformed civil litigation in the United States. The most striking feature of the new model of litigation, Abram Chayes argued, was the metamorphosis of the judge into a creator and manager of complex forms of ongoing relief, which have widespread effects on persons not before the court and require the judge\u27s continuing involvement in administration and implementation. \u27 In structural reform litigation cases, courts issue complex equitable remedies, and then remain seized of the matter until the remedies are implemented, with judges guiding and monitoring-at times in great detail-the creation or transformation of state bureaucracies

Courts Resisting Courts: Lessons from the Inter-American Court’s Struggle to Enforce Human Rights

Courts Resisting Courts explores a critical tension in international law: the relationship between international and national courts. Leading theorists assume that autonomous national courts heighten compliance with international human rights regimes. This article challenges this orthodoxy. It focuses on the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, an international court unique in that it orders far-reaching, innovative remedies that invoke action not only by the State\u27s executive, but also the legislature and local courts. Original data reveals that national courts, more than any other branch of government, shirk the Court\u27s rulings. This article turns this insight into a prescription for gaining greater compliance: International human rights courts need to directly engage national justice systems, cultivating them into compliant partners. This argument is relevant not only to the Inter-American Court, but to courts with jurisdiction over human rights across the globe

The Judicialization of Peace

As international courts gain in influence, many worry that they will impoverish domestic politics— that they will limit democratic deliberation, undermine domestic institutions, or even thwart crucial political initiatives such as efforts to make peace. Indeed, many states are in the midst of withdrawing, or actively considering withdrawal, from international commitments presided over by international courts. The Article focuses on the currently unfolding Colombian peace process, the first to be negotiated under the watch of not one but two international courts, to show that these concerns misconstrue the way international courts actually work. Throughout four years of peace talks, many predicted that the International Criminal Court and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights would impede peace by demanding prosecution of war criminals. Instead, the 2016 Colombian peace accord opens the way to a far less punitive peace than many of those familiar with the courts and underlying treaties would have deemed possible. The effect of the engagement of the international courts in Colombia has not been to impose rigid conditions from afar, but rather to allow domestic players to reinterpret the content of Colombia’s international legal obligations: the terms of Colombia’s peace were produced through—not despite—the international courts’ ongoing deliberative engagement with the peace process. The Article draws on original empirical data to reveal precisely how the international courts enabled the construction of Colombia’s sui generis peace. The Article thus speaks directly to those voicing concern over the increased involvement of international courts in national politics in general, and in peace and reconciliation in particular. It also contributes to our knowledge about how, precisely, international law comes to influence domestic politics, and how, in turn, domestic politics shape international law

Introduction: Rethinking the Impact of the Inter-American Human Rights System

This chapter introduces the central themes of the book and argues that the Inter-American Human Rights System (IAHRS) is activated by political actors and institutions in ways that transcend traditional compliance perspectives and that have the potential to meaningfully alter politics and provoke positive domestic human rights change. The chapter identifies key gaps in existing human rights scholarship, particularly in relation to the IAHRS, and outlines three core perspectives on the System’s impact on human rights. It offers a synthesis of the key findings of the volume, and provides reflections on the future prospects of the System by locating it in its broader global context

Courts Resisting Courts: Lessons from the Inter-American Court’s Struggle to Enforce Human Rights

Courts Resisting Courts explores a critical tension in international law: the relationship between international and national courts. Leading theorists assume that autonomous national courts heighten compliance with international human rights regimes. This article challenges this orthodoxy. It focuses on the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, an international court unique in that it orders far-reaching, innovative remedies that invoke action not only by the State\u27s executive, but also the legislature and local courts. Original data reveals that national courts, more than any other branch of government, shirk the Court\u27s rulings. This article turns this insight into a prescription for gaining greater compliance: International human rights courts need to directly engage national justice systems, cultivating them into compliant partners. This argument is relevant not only to the Inter-American Court, but to courts with jurisdiction over human rights across the globe

The Judicialization of Peace

As international courts gain in influence, many worry that they will impoverish domestic politics— that they will limit democratic deliberation, undermine domestic institutions, or even thwart crucial political initiatives such as efforts to make peace. Indeed, many states are in the midst of withdrawing, or actively considering withdrawal, from international commitments presided over by international courts. The Article focuses on the currently unfolding Colombian peace process, the first to be negotiated under the watch of not one but two international courts, to show that these concerns misconstrue the way international courts actually work. Throughout four years of peace talks, many predicted that the International Criminal Court and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights would impede peace by demanding prosecution of war criminals. Instead, the 2016 Colombian peace accord opens the way to a far less punitive peace than many of those familiar with the courts and underlying treaties would have deemed possible. The effect of the engagement of the international courts in Colombia has not been to impose rigid conditions from afar, but rather to allow domestic players to reinterpret the content of Colombia’s international legal obligations: the terms of Colombia’s peace were produced through—not despite—the international courts’ ongoing deliberative engagement with the peace process. The Article draws on original empirical data to reveal precisely how the international courts enabled the construction of Colombia’s sui generis peace. The Article thus speaks directly to those voicing concern over the increased involvement of international courts in national politics in general, and in peace and reconciliation in particular. It also contributes to our knowledge about how, precisely, international law comes to influence domestic politics, and how, in turn, domestic politics shape international law