Compliance of Judgments of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights

Abstract

Compliance is particularly challenging in International Law and extremely puzzling in International Human Rights. Although a large amount of research has endeavored to explain the process of incorporation, execution, and compliance of certain paradigmatic judgments of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR), only a few quantitative and multidisciplinary approaches to compliance have been developed. This paper contributes to this effort by describing and explaining the current state of compliance of the judgments of the IACtHR. The first section provides a general overview of the literature related to compliance with the judgments of the IACtHR, including theories such as realism, liberalism, institutionalism, and constructivism. The second section introduces the Inter-American System of Human Rights, the different and particular remedies that have been developed by the Court throughout its case-law, and a set of descriptive data about the work in the IACtHR. Finally, the third section develops a quantitative model for testing the compliance of judgments of the IACtHR according to the different International Relations theories.