Abstract
The overwhelming majority of unsuccessful petitions in the Organization of American States’ Inter-American human rights system are unsuccessful because they are dismissed at the pre-admissibility or admissibility phase rather than at the merits phase. Although this preliminary screening of applications constitutes the major obstacle to petitioners seeking justice, there has been relatively little scholarly analysis of the potential interplay of legal and attitudinal factors at this phase. That is, whether this phase may be where the biases that the system has been accused of (i.e., bias against leftist regimes and a “hierarchization” of negative rights and liberties over social justice) manifest themselves. This article fills this gap in the literature by undertaking a comprehensive quantitative analysis of Inter-American Commission on Human Rights admissibility decisions that measures the impact of a broad range of factors and compares the dynamics of admissibility decisions with those of merits decisions. In so doing, it places into context backlash against the system that has led to recent changes in the system’s procedures.
Highlights
Inter-American Human RightsThe Inter-American human rights system has been acknowledged as “one of the most effective parts of the otherwise largely moribund Organization of American States (OAS)” (Biron 2013), having developed over its more than 60-year history into a “quasiconstitutional regime with wide recognition of its binding jurisdiction and a respectable compliance record” (Oquendo 2017, p. 2)
In order to test the veracity of these accusations as well as to assess the extent to which the dynamics of the admissibility phase differ from those of the merits phase, comprehensive statistical analyses of the InterAmerican Commission on Human Rights (IACHR)’s merits and admissibility jurisprudence
There was no particular reason to expect them to be significantly more or less likely to be declared admissible, claims of violations of the prohibition of ex post facto laws were significantly less likely to be declared admissible while claims of violations of the rights of the child were significantly more likely to be declared admissible. This analysis has extended previous research analyzing the dynamics of the merits phase to the admissibility phase
Summary
Inter-American Human RightsThe Inter-American human rights system has been acknowledged as “one of the most effective parts of the otherwise largely moribund Organization of American States (OAS)” (Biron 2013), having developed over its more than 60-year history into a “quasiconstitutional regime with wide recognition of its binding jurisdiction and a respectable compliance record” (Oquendo 2017, p. 2). The Inter-American human rights system has been acknowledged as “one of the most effective parts of the otherwise largely moribund Organization of American States (OAS)” (Biron 2013), having developed over its more than 60-year history into a “quasiconstitutional regime with wide recognition of its binding jurisdiction and a respectable compliance record” Other OAS human rights treaties, the Inter-American system, along with the African and European systems, is one of only three regional human rights systems in which supranational tribunals are empowered to adjudicate individual complaints against states. It has begun to face an unprecedented degree of state backlash. This has primarily taken the form of accusations of bias against leftist regimes challenging American hegemony in the region, such as those in Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, and calls for fundamental change to the system.
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