Legal certainty and compliance with decisions of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights: the case “Gomes Lund and others. (‘Araguaia Guerrilla’) vs. Brazil”

Abstract

The values of national sovereignty and the obligation to comply with international obligations are often shocked. To illustrate this situation, we take the case “Gomes Lund et others (‘Araguaia Guerrilla’) vs. Brazil”, judged in 2010, as an example, considering that, in addition to still pending compliance by the country, has been having its decision contradicted by national courts. Given this panorama, the fundamental question arises about the possibility of the nation state detaching itself from its international obligations under the claim of sovereignty, as well as on the existence of criteria that can guide state conduct and, thus, provide greater predictability, in view of the constitutional requirement of legal certainty. The objective is to answer this question from research of the top organs of the national judiciary and specialized doctrine in the fields of Constitutional Law and Human Rights. Along this path, we aim to understand the structure and particularities of the Inter-American System, the coercive force of the decisions of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the legal characteristics of the constitutional requirement of legal certainty in the state behavior in this interaction between domestic and international law. This can be concluded about the mandatory enforcement of the decisions of the regional system and the deleterious effects that their non-observance causes for the constitutional principle of legal certainty, as well as it will be possible to seek ways to try to overcome this impasse.