The withdraw of Member-states from Human Rights Courts: is the judicialization of mega-politics a necessary condition?

Abstract

Currently, there are about 24 functioning international courts. Within the interdisciplinary field of International Law and International Relations, a new agenda has focused in evaluating the process of the States’ resistance to adhere to decisions by those international institutions. A specific way to resist is the withdrawal by States that are party to regional human rights courts (RHRC). This paper is particularly interested in investigating this phenomenon. Based on the ideas of Ran Hirschl, the work aims to evaluate if the judicialization of mega-politics issues by these courts can be considered a necessary condition for the withdrawal of Member States. The article uses methodological strategies present in the set-theory literature, as well as congruence analysis in its evaluation process. The study maps cases of withdrawal and threats to withdraw the three regional human rights courts in existence, with the central idea to verify if decisions on issues of mega-politics were present were those actions occurred. To supplement this, it also sought to identify whether the decisions from the courts were linked to the justifications for withdrawal or threat to withdraw by the States.