Marcelo Torelly

From Compliance to Engagement: Assessing the Impact of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights on Constitutional Law in Latin America

Torelly argues that rather than converging/complying or resisting/non-complying with the Inter-American Human Rights System, domestic judges often engage with it, producing hybrid solutions that combine constitutional and international law. From this engagement perspective, the chapter examines the role of domestic courts as one of the key actors shaping the impact of international human rights law on domestic fundamental rights. Assessing case law from Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Uruguay, the chapter addresses cases of harmonising and dissonant engagement in contrast with cases of resistance and convergence. It concludes that in the absence of possibilities of hierarchical solutions to legal conflicts, the pursuit of engagement may increase the impact of the IAHRS, and amplify the use of international human rights norms by domestic judges.

Transnational Legal Process and Fundamental Rights in Latin America: How Does the Inter-American Human Rights System Reshape Domestic Constitutional Rights?

How does the transnational legal process, based on international human rights law, affect domestic constitutional law? This chapter analyses how domestic constitutional regimes interact with the Inter-American Human Rights System. It argues that structural transformations in international law together with broader legal interaction have allowed new players to behave as constitutional actors articulating political claims in the language of fundamental rights. This process inaugurates possibilities of reshaping constitutional law, allowing civil society actors to bypass domestic institutional obstacles to human rights enforcement. The parallel development of the Inter-American Human Rights System as an independent regime with a plurality of domestic answers to its normative growth leads to a unique path of development, adding an interesting set of models of transversal human rights governance to the broader field of ‘global governance’.

DO DIREITO INTERNACIONAL À GOVERNANÇA GLOBAL: MUDANÇAS ESTRUTURAIS DO ESPAÇO TRANSNACIONAL

O artigo examina a emergencia do conceito de governanca global argumentando que com a complexificacao social surgiram novas formas regulatorias transnacionais que desafiam o conceito tradicional de direito internacional articulado no inicio do Seculo XIX. Propoe uma classificacao em tres etapas das transformacoes do espaco transnacional ao longo do Seculo XX, caracterizadas respectivamente por um periodo assembleista, outro executivo, chegando ao atual, de judicializacao transnacional com ampla fragmentacao normativa e o surgimento de regimes auto-continentes com pretensoes constitucionais. Metodologicamente, e procedida a descricao das organizacoes internacionais prevalentes e das teorias juridicas hegemonicas em cada uma das fases. Na conclusoes, sao mapeadas sete caracteristicas distintivas do espaco transnacional ao largo do periodo analisado: tipo de problema preocupando o campo; estrategias de acao dos operadores; processo de tomada de decisao; estilo de governanca; organizacoes e instituicoes disponiveis; atores principais; e abordagens teoricas.