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ABSTRACT
This article discusses the constitutional turn in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights’ recent jurisprudence, exemplified in the adoption of the conventionality control doctrine. Building on previous work and inquiring for the first time into the legal theory of Judge Sergio García Ramírez, who created the doctrine, I show that conventionality control lacks solid legal footing and reveals a problematic understanding of the Inter-American Court as a regional constitutional tribunal. I propose, therefore, an alternative account of the doctrine that rests more on state practice. Reviewing how two states, Peru and Argentina, have internalised the Inter-American Court’s case law on amnesty laws – a prominent feature of the court’s jurisprudence – I argue that the court should embrace such domestic developments to, first, provide a robust justification for its assertion of international authority; and second, to strengthen the court in the face of increasing challenges and criticisms raised by states and other actors.
Acknowledgements
For their valuable comments at different stages of this project, I am grateful to Vera Bergelson, Jean-Marc Coicaud, Melissa Durkee, Maggie Gardner, Rebecca Hamilton, Adil Haque, Neha Jain, Rachel Lopez, Chrystin Ondersma, Ryan Scoville and Marcelo Torelly. Special thanks are due to Par Engstrom, Courtney Hillebrecht and Sabrina Safrin. Participants at the 2015 University College London workshop ‘The Politics of Institutional Change’; the 2016 International Society of Public Law (ICON-S) Annual Conference, and the 2017 Junior International Law Scholars Association Annual Workshop, provided helpful comments. All remaining errors are my own.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Note on contributor
Jorge Contesse is Assistant Professor of Law at Rutgers Law School. He holds a JSD and LLM degrees from Yale Law School and an LLB from Diego Portales Law School.
Notes
1. See generally Yves Haeck, Oswaldo Ruiz-Chiriboga, and Clara Burbano-Herrera, ed., The Inter-American Court of Human Rights: Theory and Practice, Present and Future (Cambridge, UK: Intersentia, 2015). On the influence that the Inter-American Court has had on the European Court’s jurisprudence, see European Court of Human Rights, Research Report: References to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the Inter-American instruments in the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights (Council of Europe, 2016), http://www.echr.coe.int/Documents/Research_report_inter_american_court_ENG.pdf.
2. In 2014, the Constitutional Court of the Dominican Republic ruled that the country’s instrument of ratification of the American Convention on Human Rights was unconstitutional and, therefore, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights’ judgments could not bind the state. Constitutional Court of the Dominican Republic, Judgment T/0256/2014 of 4 November 2014. In February 2017, the Argentinean Supreme Court found that the Inter-American Court was acting as a ‘fourth instance’ by ordering the state to ‘revoke’ a 2001 decision by the Supreme Court found to be in violation of the American Convention. National Supreme Court of Justice of Argentina, Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores y Culto s/ informe sentencia dictada en el caso ‘Fontevecchia y D’Amico vs. Argentina’ por la Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos, 14 February 2017.
3. See Jean-Marc Coicaud, ‘Legitimacy, Across Borders and Over Time’, in Fault Lines of International Legitimacy, ed. H. Charlesworth and J. Coicaud (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 17 (defining legitimacy as a ‘process through which both political power and obedience are justified’).
4. See Marcelo Torelly, ‘Transnational Legal Process and Fundamental Rights in Latin America: How Does the Inter-American Human Rights System Reshape Domestic Constitutional Rights?’, in Law and Policy in Latin America. Transforming Courts, Institutions, and Rights 23, ed. P. Fortes, L. Boratti, A. Palacios Lleras, and T. Gerald Daly (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016); Ariel E. Dulitzky, ‘An Inter-American Constitutional Court? The Intervention of Conventionality Control by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights’, Texas International Law Journal 50 (2015): 45–93. Sagües considers that the court takes the role of a ‘supranational cassation court’. See Néstor P. Sagües, ‘Obligaciones Internacionales y Control de Convencionalidad’, Estudios Constitucionales 8 (2010): 101, 126.
5. See Armin von Bogdandy et al., ‘Ius Constitutionale Commune en América Latina: A Regional Approach to Transformative Constitutionalism’, in Transformative Constitutionalism in Latin America: The Emergence of a New Ius Commune, ed. A. von Bogdandy, E. Ferrer Mac-Gregor, M.A. Antoniazzi, F. Piovesan and X. Soley (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2017).
6. See Jorge Contesse, ‘The Final Word? Constitutional Dialogue and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights’, International Journal of Constitutional Law 15 (2017): 414.
7. See Jorge Contesse, ‘Contestation and Deference in the Inter-American Human Rights System’, Law and Contemporary Problems 79 (2016).
8. As Jean-Marc Coicaud observes, legitimacy can be understood as a ‘process through which both political power and obedience are justified’. See Jean-Marc Coicaud, ‘Legitimacy, Across Borders and Over Time’, in Fault Lines of International Legitimacy, ed. Charlesworth and Coicaud, 17.
9. Néstor Pedro Sagües, ‘Control de convencionalidad’, Lecture, Centro de Capacitación y Gestión Judicial de Misiones – Dr Mario Dei Castelli, 16 October 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qDfGIbcuDU.
10. See Dulitzky, ‘An Inter-American Constitutional Court?’, at 52; Laurence Burgorgue-Larsen, ‘Chronicle of a Fashionable Theory in Latin America: Decoding the Doctrinal Discourse on Conventionality Control’, in 35 Years of Inter-American Court of Human Rights: Theory and Practice, Present and Future, ed. Yves Haeck, Clara Burbano Herrera, and Oswaldo Ruiz Chiriboga (London: Intersentia, 2016), 637, 653; Karlos Castilla Juárez, ‘Control de convencionalidad interamericano: una propuesta de orden a diez años de incertidumbre’, Revista Instituto Interamericano de Derechos Humanos 64 (2016): 87–125.
11. Gelman v. Uruguay, IACtHR, Judgment of 20 March 2013 (Monitoring Compliance with Judgement), para. 60.
12. States did not consider the possibility that the court could bind national judges without an intermediary act of those states. Furthermore, some delegates, such as Ecuador and Mexico, expressly stated that their domestic constitutions would prevail over the projected inter-American treaty. See Secretaría General, Organización de los Estados Americanos, Conferencia Especializada Interamericana sobre Derechos Humanos, Actas y Documentos, 7–22 November 1969, San José, Costa Rica, OEA/Ser.K/XVI/1.2, at 100. At the inter-American conference where the treaty was adopted, the Organization of American States’ Secretary General, Mr Galo Plaza, said: ‘it is necessary to establish a regional legal instrument that makes it mandatory to respect man’s fundamental rights on the international plane’. Ibid., at 419 (emphasis added).
13. Almonacid Arellano v. Chile, IACtHR, Judgment of 26 September 2006 (Preliminary Objections, Merits, Reparations and Costs), para. 124.
14. Dismissed Congressional Employees (Aguado-Alfaro et al.) v. Peru, IACtHR, Judgment of 24 November 2006 (Preliminary Objections, Merits, Reparations and Costs, Judgment), para. 128. It is remarkable that the court says that such power must ‘evidently’ be exercised in such a way.
15. See Paolo G. Carozza and Pablo González, ‘The Final Word? Constitutional Dialogue and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights: A Reply to Jorge Contesse’, International Journal of Constitutional Law 15, no. 2 (2017): 436.
16. Contesse, ‘The Final Word?’, 419.
17. See text accompanying note 83.
18. Ximena Fuentes Torrijo, ‘International and Domestic Law: Definitely an Odd Couple’, Revista Jurídica Universidad de Puerto Rico 77 (2008): 483.
19. At the Vienna Conference, the United States’ delegate even called the pacta sunt servanda principle ‘a self-evident truth’, adding that, ‘it would [have been] more appropriately placed in a convention on State responsibility than in one of the law of treaties’. Vienna Conference, Thirty-ninth Meeting, 18 April 1968, at 151, paras 65 and 69.
20. Luxembourg’s delegate explained that the proposed amendment was ‘based on article 5 of the Treaty of Rome establishing the European Economic Community. Under that provision, member States were required to take all appropriate measures to ensure that the obligations arising out of the Community’s laws were carried out’. Ibid., para. 70.
21. Vienna Conference, Twelfth Plenary Meeting, 6 May 1969, p. 49, para. 68.
22. Ibid., para. 75.
23. Vienna Conference, Thirteenth Plenary Meeting, 6 May 1969, p. 52, paras 15 and 17. (‘The matter should remain governed by the provisions of article 23 [27] on performance in good faith; the implementation of treaties was a matter of State sovereignty and should be left to the legal conscience of States.’)
24. Ibid., para. 18.
25. Ibid., para. 27.
26. ‘In Almonacid’, Former Judge García Ramírez commented, ‘we did not dare to use with great emphasis the conventionality control’. See Sergio García Ramírez, ‘El control de convencionalidad’, Conferencia Magistral, Instituto de Investigaciones Jurídicas, UNAM (2015).
27. Tibi v. Ecuador, IACtHR Concurring Opinion of Judge Sergio García Ramírez, 7 September 2004, para. 3.
28. López Álvarez v. Honduras, IACtHR, Concurring Opinion of Judge Sergio García Ramírez, 1 February 2006, para. 30.
29. The court adopts and diffuses the doctine as a matter of reparations, in particular, under the notion of ‘guarantees of non-repetition’. According to the court’s case law, judges must exercise conventionality control to control legislative and administrative measures, preventing such measures to trigger states’ international responsibility. On the use of conventionality control by the Inter-American Court, see Carlos Kastilla Juárez, ‘Control de convencionalidad interamericano: una propuesta de orden a diez años de incertidumbre’, Revista Instituto Interamericano de Derechos Humanos 64 (2016): 87–125. As Judge Ferrer MacGregor has observed, ‘[t]he parameters of the conventionality control mechanism have also been set by resolutions other than final judgments in contentious cases’. Eduardo Ferrer-MacGregor, ‘Conventionality Control: The New Doctrine of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights’, American Journal of International Law Unbound 109 (2015): 93, 95.
30. See García Ramírez, ‘El control de convencionalidad’.
31. On the vague character of the conventionality control, Former Judge García Ramírez acknowledged in a public address in 2016: ‘I believe that there still isn’t a clear answer both in this continent and in the country about what exactly conventionality control is – and what its effects are’. See Sergio García Ramírez, Control de convencionalidad, in 20 años del Tribunal Electoral del Poder Judicial de la Federación, http://www.te.gob.mx/transmisiones/vod/vod.asp?video=/Portales/Coroe/220816/Mesa1.mp4.
32. Sergio García Ramírez, The Relationship between Inter-American Jurisdiction and States (National Systems): Some Pertinent Questions, at 9; Sergio García Ramírez, ‘The Future of the Inter-American Human Rights System’, Working Paper No. 3, The Center for Civil & Human Rights, University of Notre Dame, May 2014, https://humanrights.nd.edu/assets/134035/garciaramireziaeng.pdf.
33. Tibi v. Ecuador, Concurring Opinion of Judge Sergio García Ramírez, 7 September 2004, para. 4. In another place, García has reiterated the idea, pointing at the court’s ‘institutional role as a human rights tribunal in the region where it operates: an agency for generating renewed Inter-American human rights law, which establishes, by means of addressing large themes in especially transcendent cases, the criteria which will guide the national courts in a broad process of their reception of Inter-American Law’. García Ramírez, The Relationship between Inter-American Jurisdiction, at 8.
34. Tibi v. Ecuador, Concurring Opinion of Judge Sergio García Ramírez, 7 September 2004, para. 6.
35. Gelman v. Uruguay, para. 66.
36. According to the American Convention on Human Rights, before a case is brought before the court, victims of human rights violations must file a petition before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, a quasi-judicial body which, along with the court, makes up the human rights bodies of the Organization of American States. Only if and when the commission finds a state responsible for a violation of the American Convention, and the state is not able or willing to address the commission’s recommendations to remedy such violation, can it take the case before the court. When the commission receives a petition it must first examine its admissibility, and only after declaring the petition admissible may it address the case’s merits.
37. Cruz Sánchez and others v. Peru´, IACtHR, Dissenting Opinion of Eduardo Vio Grossi, 17 April 2015, para. 8 (‘la Comisión, actuando a través de su Secretaría Ejecutiva, debe realizar un primer control de convencionalidad de la petición, contrastándola con lo dispuesto por la Convención respecto de los requisitos que debe cumplir para ser presentada’).
38. Ibid., paras 11–12: ‘ … el Reglamento de la Comisión no dispone que es en el momento en que ésta se pronuncia sobre la admisibilidad de la petición en que deben haberse agotado los recursos internos, sino que, por el contrario, señala que es en ese instante que aquella “verifica” si ellos fueron o no oportunamente interpuestos y agotados o que no era menester que ello ocurriera, es decir, realiza un segundo control de convencionalidad de la petición, confrontándola con lo dispuesto en la Convención en lo atinente a los requisitos que debe haber cumplido y, por tal motivo, puede que sea “admitida” o bien, desestimada’.
39. According to the EU’s official website, ‘EU Member States have transferred part of their sovereignty to EU institutions’, http://www.euintheus.org/who-we-are/how-the-eu-works
40. García Ramírez, The Relationship between Inter-American Jurisdiction, at 9 (my emphasis).
41. Ariel E. Dulitzky, ‘An Inter-American Constitutional Court? The Intervention of Conventionality Control by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights’, Texas International Law Journal 50 (2015): 45–93.
42. See Anthea Roberts, Paul B. Stephan, Perre-Hugues Verdier, and Mila Versteeg, ‘Comparative International Law: Framing the Field’, American Journal of International Law 109 (2015): 467, 469 (‘comparative international law entails identifying, analyzing, and explaining similarities and differences in how actors in different legal systems understand, interpret, apply, and approach international law’).
43. See Dominic McGoldrick, ‘A Defence of the Margin of Appreciation and an Argument for Its Use by the Human Rights Committee’, International and Comparative Law Quarterly 65 (2015): 22.
44. For the reasons discussed here and others, the margin of appreciation doctrine has not found reception in the inter-American human rights system. See Nino Tsereteli, ‘Emerging Doctrine of Deference of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights?’, International Journal of Human Rights 20 (2016): 1097; Pablo Contreras, ‘National Discretion and International Deference in the Restriction of Human Rights: A Comparison Between the Jurisprudence of the European and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights’, Northwestern Journal of International Human Rights 11 (2012): 28; Dominic McGoldrick, ‘Affording States a Margin of Appreciation: Comparing the European and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights’, in Towards Convergence in International Human Rights Law, ed. C. M. Buckley, A. Donald and P. Leach (Leiden: Brill | Nijhoff, 2017); Amaury A. Reyes-Torres, ‘Una cuestión de apreciación: el margen de apreciación en la Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos’, Revista General de Derecho Público Comparado 18 (2015). However, there seems to be a recent push for the adoption of (at least some form of) margin of appreciation – or margin of ‘discretion,’ as current judge Pérez Pérez has put it – in the context of the inter-American system. See Paolo Carozza, ‘The Anglo-Latin Divide and the Future of the Inter- American System of Human Rights’, Notre Dame Journal of International & Comparative Law 5 (2015): 153; Contesse, ‘Contestation and Deference in the Inter-American Human Rights System’.
45. Paolo Carozza, ‘The Anglo-Latin Divide and the Future of the Inter- American System of Human Rights’, Notre Dame Journal of International & Comparative Law 5 (2015): 153.
46. Such bodies are the European Parliament (Art. 14, EU Treaty) and the Council (Art. 16), which together exercise legislative functions; the European Council, comprising the heads of states (Art. 15); the European Commission, which proposes legislation to the Parliament and the Council, and oversees the application of EU law (Art. 17); a Court of Justice (Art. 19), and a Central Bank.
47. Steven Koh argues that all courts have (what he calls) ‘Marbury moments’, that is, decisions ‘in which a court (1) in its early history (2) rules on the nature of its own authority or an axiomatic principle of law (3) in a manner that is not textually transparent’. See Steven Arrigg Koh, ‘Marbury Moments’, Columbia Journal of Transnational Law 54 (2015): 116, 118. Except for the early stage feature, the Inter-American Court’s adoption of conventionality control, in Almonacid Arellano, could well be its ‘Marbury moment’.
48. Flaminio Costa v. ENEL, ECJ (1964), 594.
49. The court observes: ‘The transfer by the States from their domestic legal system to the Community legal system of the rights and obligations arising under the Treaty carries with it a permanent limitation of their sovereign rights, against which a subsequent unilateral act incompatible with the concept of the Community cannot prevail.’ Ibid. (emphasis added). In another passage, the court held that ‘the EEC Treaty has created its own legal system which, on the entry into force of the Treaty, became an integral part of the legal system of the Member States and which their courts are bound to apply … The Member States have limited their sovereign rights and have thus created a body of law which binds both their nationals and themselves.’ Ibid., at 593.
50. In his study on the direct effect doctrine, André Nollkaemper observes that the Inter-American Court’s case is ‘[p]erhaps the most noteworthy exception outside Europe’ of an international tribunal determining that international law has direct effect. See André Nollkaemper, ‘The Duality of Direct Effect of International Law’, European Journal of International Law 25 (2015): 105, 124.
51. I use the traditional distinction between rules and principles as formulated by constitutional scholars and courts. Rules are norms that can be applied in a binary, ‘all or nothing’, fashion. They allow judges and individuals to know with great clarity what types of conduct are permitted or prohibited, for example, a norm that establishes electricity tariffs. Principles are open-texture norms, which force interpreters to apply them as ‘optimization commands’ in the formulation of German legal theorist Robert Alexy. Human rights norms are typically used as an example of legal principles. See Robert Alexy, A Theory of Constitutional Rights (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004).
52. See Gerald L. Neuman, ‘Import, Export and Regional Consent in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights’, European Journal of International Law 19 (2008): 101.
53. On the doctrine of self-executing treaties, See Yuji Iwasawa, ‘The Doctrine of Self-executing Treaties in the United States: A Critical Analysis’, Virginia Journal of International Law 26 (1986): 635. See also the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Foster v. Neilson, 27 U.S. 253 (1829).
54. On the notion of incorporation, see, inter alia, Harold Hongju Koh, ‘How Is International Human Rights Law Enforced?’, Indiana Law Journal 74 (1999): 1397; Catherine Powell, ‘Dialogic Federalism: Constitutional Possibilities for Incorporation of Human Rights Law in the United States’, University of Pennsylvania Law Review 150 (2001–2002): 245; Martha F. Davis, ‘Upstairs, Downstairs: Subnational Incorporation of Human Rights Law at the End of an Era’, Fordham Law Review 77 (2008): 411, 433; Gerald Neuman, ‘Human Rights and Constitutional Rights: Harmony and Dissonance’, Stanford Law Review 55 (2003): 1863.
55. See Alexandra Huneeus, ‘Courts Resisting Courts: Lessons from the Inter-American Court’s Struggle to Enforce Human Rights’, Cornell International Law Journal 44 (2011): 493, 526; Fernando Basch and Jorge Contesse, ‘International Law and Domestic Adjudication’, in The Latin American Casebook: Courts, Constitutions, and Rights, ed. Juan F. Gonzalez-Bertomeu and Roberto Gargarella (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2015).
56. The court has observed that ‘the region’s highest Courts, such as the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Costa Rica, the Constitutional Court of Bolivia, the Supreme Court of Justice of the Dominican Republic, the Constitutional Court of Peru, the Supreme Court of Justice of Argentina, the Constitutional Court of Colombia, the Supreme Court of Mexico and the Supreme Court of Panama have [taken] into account the interpretations offered by the Inter-American Court’. Atala Riffo and Daughter v. Chile, IACtHR, Judgment of 24 February 2012, para. 283.
57. See Wayne Sandholtz, Yining Bei, and Kayla Caldwell, ‘Backlash and International Human Rights Courts’, in Contracting Human Rights, ed. Alison Brysk and Michael Stohl (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2018).
58. To be sure, the court’s use of these doctrines may create tensions with member states. For instance, the Italian Constitutional Court, the German Federal Constitutional Court and the Danish Supreme Court have all at different moments asserted their authority to assess community law against their own national constitutions. See Youri Devuyst, ‘The European Union’s Constitutional Order: Between Community Method and Ad Hoc Compromise’, Berkeley Journal of International Law 18 (2000): 46. In 1994, the United Kingdom sought to annul a Council Directive on the organisation of working time, arguing that the directive should have been adopted by unanimous vote. The ECJ found that the Council had not violated any norm and thus the UK must implement the directive (United Kingdom v. Council). In preparation for an EU conference, the UK published a report expressing concern about the EU’s intrusive powers on domestic affairs. The report stated: ‘popular enthusiasm for Europe and support for the further development of the Union are most likely to be enhanced if the European Union refrains from intrusion in national affairs and unnecessary regulation’. See Foreign and Commonwealth Office of Great Britain, A Partnership of Nations: The British Approach to the European Union Intergovernmental Conference 1996, para. 54. Two decades later, UK citizens voted to exit the EU.
59. According to the court: ‘The democratic legitimacy of specific acts in a society is limited by the norms of protection of human rights recognized in international treaties, such as the American Convention, in such a form that the existence of one true democratic regime is determined by both its formal and substantial characteristics, and therefore, particularly in cases of serious violations of nonrevocable norms of International Law, the protection of human rights constitutes an impassable limit to the rule of majority … ’. Gelman v. Uruguay, para. 239.
60. See Luigi Ferrajoli, ‘Democracia y Garantismo’ (2010): 32.
61. Contesse, ‘Contestation and Deference in the Inter-American Human Rights System’.
62. See Gabriela Kletzel, ‘The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights’ New Strategic Plan: An Opportunity for True Strengthening’, International Journal of Human Rights 20 (2017), https://doi.org/10.1080/13642987.2016.1268772.
63. See Shai Dothan, ‘How International Courts Enhance Their Legitimacy’, Theoretical Inquiries in Law 14 (2013): 455.
64. In most cases, the same authoritarian regimes, facing the prospect of criminal prosecution of those responsible for human rights atrocities, enacted such amnesty laws. In other instances, post-authoritarian transition regimes decided to adopt amnesty laws as a means to ensure political reconciliation among opposing parties. Similarly, some amnesty laws benefit only members of the military involved in human rights violations; others encompass all who have committed human rights violations or criminal offenses during the period covered by the amnesty law.
65. Gomes Lund et al. (‘Guerrilha do Araguaia’) v. Brazil, IACtHR, Judgment of 24 November 2010 (Preliminary Objections, Reparations and Costs); Barrios Altos v. Peru, IACtHR, Judgment of 14 March 2011 (Merits); Almonacid Arellano v. Chile, IACtHR, Judgment of 26 September 2006 (Preliminary Objections, Merits, Reparations and Costs); La Cantuta v. Peru (Merits, Reparations and Costs), IACtHR, Judgment of 29 November 2006; Gelman v. Uruguay; El Mozote v. El Salvador, IACtHR, Judgment of 25 October 2012 (Merits, Reparations and Costs).
66. For a critique of the court’s doctrine on criminal law, see Ezequiel Malarino, ‘Judicial Activism, Punitivism and Supranationalisation: Illiberal and Antidemocratic Tendencies of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights’, International Criminal Law Review 12 (2012): 665.
67. See Lisa J. Laplante, ‘Outlawing Amnesty: The Return of Criminal Justice in Transitional Justice Schemes’, Virginia Journal of International Law 49 (2009): 916.
68. Barrios Altos v. Peru, para. 39.
69. Ibid., para. 40.
70. Ibid., para. 44. In his concurring opinion, Judge Cançado Trindáde added that, ‘this incompatibility signifies that those laws are null and void … [and] determines the invalidity of the act, which signifies that the said act cannot produce legal effects’. Ibid., Concurring Opinion by Judge Antonio Cançado Trindáde, para. 15 (emphasis added).
71. Barrios Altos v. Peru, para. 2(i).
72. The law granted an amnesty to ‘all members of the security forces and civilians who had been accused, investigated, prosecuted or convicted, or who were carrying out prison sentences, for human rights violations’. Ibid., para. 2(j).
73. Sentencia de 16 de junio 1995. Disposición Cuarta Transitoria en relación con Art. 138 (control difuso).
74. Barrios Altos v. Peru, para. 2(m).
75. Barrios Altos v. Peru, para. 2(n).
76. Notably, article 205 of the Peruvian Constitution establishes the right of all citizens to resort to supranational human rights organs once domestic remedies have been exhausted.
77. The Peruvian government requested an interpretation decision by the Inter-American Court to determine whether the Barrios Altos decision applied only to that actual case or whether the holding extended to other similar cases. In response, the court said that the case’s doctrine – that amnesty laws are inapplicable – encompass all cases, not only the criminal investigations in Barrios Altos.
78. Exp. No. 4587-2004-AA /TC, Santiago Enrique Martín Rivas, 29 November 2005, ¶52.
79. Ibid.
80. Ibid., ¶63.
81. Ibid., ¶63 (citing the Human Rights Committee Report on Peru, CCPR/CO/70/PER, 15 November 2000, ¶9).
82. Supreme Court of Justice of Argentina, Ekmekdjian v. Sofovich, Fallos, 315:1492, 7 July 1992. see Víctor Bazán, ‘El derecho internacional de los derechos humanos desde la óptica de la Corte Suprema de Justicia de Argentina’, Estudios Constitucionales 8, no. 2 (2010): 359.
83. Ekmekdjian v. Sofovich, ¶ 19.
84. Supreme Court of Justice of Argentina, Simón, Julio Héctor y Otros, Fallos, 328:2056, 14 June 2005 (overruling Supreme Court of Justice of Argentina, Camps, Ramón Juan Alberto y Otros, Fallos, 315: 1492, 22 June 1987.
85. For a detailed analysis of the politics of the Argentinean transitional justice, see Annelen Micus, ‘The Inter-American Human Rights System as a Safeguard for Justice in National Transitions: From Amnesty Laws to Accountability in Argentina, Chile and Peru’ (2015). For an analysis of the Simón decision, see Christina A.E. Bakker, ‘A Full Stop to Amnesty in Argentina: The Simón Case’, International Criminal Justice 3, no. 5 (2005): 1106.
86. Michael J. Lazzara, ‘Kidnapped Memories: Argentina’s Stolen Children Tell Their Stories’, International Journal of Human Rights 12, no. 3 (2013): 319. See also ‘Children of the Dirty War: Argentina’s stolen orphans’, The New Yorker, 19 March 2012.
87. Juzgado Nacional en lo Criminal y Correccional Federal No. 4, ‘Fallo Simón’. The decision discussed at large the development of international criminal law although it did not use the Inter-American Court’s case law.
88. Cámara Nacional de Apelaciones en lo Criminal y Correccional Federal, Sala 11, ‘Incidente de apelación de Simón, Julio’, Decision of November 9, 2001, Case No. 17.899, cited by Micus, supra note 81, at 238.
89. Supreme Court of Justice of Argentina, Simón, Julio Héctor y otros s/ privación ilegítima de la libertad, etc., causa No. 17.768.
90. Consuelo Herrera v. Argentina, IACtHR, Judgment of 2 October 1992, para. 20.
91. Ibid., para. 23.
92. Simón was a step further in a political process that began years earlier. In 2003, the Argentinean Congress had declared that the both amnesty laws were null and void ab initio, along the lines of the Barrios Altos doctrine. When the Supreme Court handed down Simón, it was thus confirming the legislature’s decision to not just repeal, but in fact to annul, such legislation. The effects of such annulment were that all those who had benefited from the amnesty could not invoke the prohibition of retroactivity of penal laws and the principle of res judicata, and could now be tried. Ibid., para. 31.
93. Article 38 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice establishes customary international law and judicial decisions – although the latter as a ‘subsidiary means’ – as sources of international legal obligations.
94. Lisa J. Laplante, ‘Outlawing Amnesty: The Return of Criminal Justice in Transitional Justice Schemes’, Virginia Journal of International Law 49 (2009): 916 (observing that ‘international human rights law now stands for the proposition that no amnesty is lawful in [transitional justice settings]’, at 919).
95. Louise Mallinder, ‘The End of Amnesty or Regional Overreach? Interpreting the Erosion of South America’s Amnesty Laws’, International and Comparative Law Quarterly 65 (2016): 645 (arguing that despite the rejection trend of amnesty laws in South America it is disputable that there could be a universal norm of customary law outlawing amnesties for international crimes and gross human rights violations).
96. Gomes Lund et al. (‘Guerrilha do Araguaia’) v. Brazil, IACtHR, Judgment of 24 November 2010 (Preliminary Objections, Reparations and Costs), para. 163–9; Gelman v. Uruguay, para. 215–23.
97. See note 2. Admittedly, my account leaves out a more detailed explanation of how states resist the Inter-American Court’s decisions. Sceptics might even question that there is in fact a pushback trend in the Americas, and that the cases I mentioned above (note 2) may just be a few isolated instances of resistance. I leave it to further research to demonstrate that domestic resistance may in fact lead to backlash against the inter-American human rights system, in a way similar to what has happened in the European context with some states, such as the United Kingdom and, more recently, Russia.
98. Former Judge García Ramírez recently stated: ‘In my view the nations of the Americas – and I focus, of course, on those of Latin, Ibero- or Hispanic America – have made and are making their own voyage into the wind, from a certain point of departure, toward the common destiny sought by humanity: the arrival port that implies the definitive reign – not merely discursive, but in practice – of human rights.’ ‘The Relationship Between Inter-American Jurisdiction and States (national systems): Some Pertinent Questions, The Future of the Inter-American Human Rights System’, Working Paper No. 3, The Center for Civil & Human Rights, University of Notre Dame, May 2014, at 4, https://humanrights.nd.edu/assets/134035/garciaramireziaeng.pdf. Similarly, for some current judges in the court, doctrines such as conventionality control contribute to the construction of a Latin American common law – a ‘ius constitutionale americanum’. See Cabrera Montiel, IACtHR, Concurring Opinion of Judge Eduardo Ferrer-MacGregor.