The Inter-American Court of Human Rights: The Ambassador of Universalism

Abstract:     
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights has developed an original, creative, avant-garde and even 'legally non-conformist' jurisprudence. The Court takes certain liberties with regard to the way in which it interprets the American Convention, treating the State-centric paradigm and voluntarism with disdain and consequently risks displeasing member States and internationalist scholars. However, the Court adopts this attitude intentionally and asserts the Inter-American distinctiveness through its own construction of legal universalism. In order to analyze it, the paper will describe the Court's work through the prism of a number of problems, emphasizing the most salient characteristics of this 'Inter-American doctrine': individualization; criminalization; constitutionalization; humanization; and moralization of inter-American law.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 41

Keywords: human rights, inter-American Court of human Rights, universalism

JEL Classification: K33

Accepted Paper Series