Human Rights Courts and Global Constitutionalism: Coordination through Judicial Dialogue
KFG Working Paper Series, No. 35, Berlin Potsdam Research Group “The International Rule of Law – Rise or Decline?”, June 2019
30 Pages Posted: 7 Jun 2019
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Human Rights Courts and Global Constitutionalism: Coordination through Judicial Dialogue
Human Rights Courts and Global Constitutionalism: Coordination through Judicial Dialogue
Date Written: June 2019
Abstract
International courts regularly cite each other, in part as a means of building legitimacy. Such international, cross-court use of precedent (or “judicial dialogue”) among the regional human rights courts and the Human Rights Committee has an additional purpose and effect: the construction of a rights-based global constitutionalism. Judicial dialogue among the human rights courts is purposeful in that the courts see themselves as embedded in, and contributing to, a global human rights legal system. Cross-citation among the human rights courts advances the construction of rights-based global constitutionalism in that it provides a basic degree of coordination among the regional courts. The jurisprudence of the U.N. Human Rights Committee (HRC), as an authoritative interpreter of core international human rights norms, plays the role of a central focal point for the decentralized coordination of jurisprudence. The network of regional courts and the HRC is building an emergent institutional structure for global rights-based constitutionalism.
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