Upholding Human Rights in the Hemisphere: Casting Down Impunity Through the Inter-American Court of Human Rights

41 Pages Posted: 7 Jun 2013

See all articles by Morse Tan

Morse Tan

Northern Illinois University

Abstract

This article further fills the lacuna in the scholarly literature regarding compliance theory and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. It builds upon a previous publication by this same author titled “Member State Compliance with the Judgments of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights”. As with its predecessor, this article explores various prominent theoretical models including the managerial model, fairness and legitimacy, transnational legal process, and self-interest. Harmonizing aspects of these distinctive theoretical models as an analytical base, this article proposes a new, hybrid model which suggests that many of the central tenets of the previous theories reflect reconcilable dimensions of compliance with the Court’s judgments rather than representing an ineluctable, theoretical conflict.

This new hybrid model has been developed in the context of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights’s early jurisprudence on the merits: the hybrid model finds application in the Court’s first decisions in contentious cases, which constitute the critical corpus of precedent upon which its growing caseload, legitimacy and authority have been built. The article’s focus allows its conclusions to be tailored specifically to the Inter-American System to bring greater comprehension of international law compliance in our hemisphere specifically, as well as contributing to the on-going theoretical discussion of compliance theory.

Keywords: Inter-American Court of Human Rights, human rights, international law, international courts, international law compliance

JEL Classification: H56, I00, I10, I30, I31, K14, K33, K40, K41, K42, K49

Suggested Citation

Tan, Morse, Upholding Human Rights in the Hemisphere: Casting Down Impunity Through the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. Morse H. Tan, Upholding Human Rights in the Hemisphere: Casting Down Impunity Through the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, 43 Tex. Int'l L.J. 243 (2008), Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2274826

Morse Tan (Contact Author)

Northern Illinois University ( email )

Swen Parson Hall
DeKalb, IL 60115
United States

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