The EconomistFebruary 3rd 2018 351I
N A quiet suburb of San José, Costa Rica’s
capital, is a building that looks like the
White House in miniature. Costa Rica’s
government gave it in 1993 to the Inter-
American Court of Human Rights
(IACHR), established 14 years earlier, to
show its commitment to human rights. Un-
til 2008, when the court built a second
floor above the garage with money from
Norway, its seven judges deliberated in a
repurposed dining room. The setting is
modest. The decisions emanating from it,
increasingly, are not.
On January 9th the court told Costa
Rica to legalise same-sex marriage. That
provoked a furore in the country, which is
scheduled to hold the first round of presi-
dential and legislative elections on Febru-
ary 4th (see next story). A fringe candidate
for the presidency who vows to ignore the
ruling is suddenly leading in the polls. The
judgment will also cause consternation in
many of the 20 other Latin American and
Caribbean countries that fall under the
court’s jurisdiction. In the court’s view, its
opinion is binding there, too.
It derives its power from its role as the fi-
nal arbiter of the meaning of the American
Convention on Human Rights, which took
effect in 1978 and gained influence as dicta-
torships became democracies in the 1980s
and 1990s. The court rules on cases referred
to it by the region’s human-rights commis-
sion, a watchdog organisation that is based
in Washington. The commission can issueto hear a complaint against the recent deci-
sion by Peru’s current president, Pedro Pab-
lo Kuczynski, to pardon him.)
Recently, the court and commission
have moved into more contentious territo-
ry. In 2001 the IACHRstruck down a clause
in Chile’s constitution that stifled freedom
of expression. In the same year it ruled that
governments must consult indigenous
communities before approving projects on
their lands. In 2006 the court obliged
Peru’s government to add the names of 41
members of Shining Path, a leftist guerrilla
group, to a memorial for victims of terro-
rism. In the early 2010s the human-rights
commission rebuked left-wing govern-
ments in Ecuador (over press freedom) and
Venezuela (over political prisoners).
Such rulings have provoked a backlash
against both the court and the commis-
sion. Brazil suspended its contribution to
the OASafter the commission issued a
“precautionary measure” that temporarily
blocked construction of the Belo Monte
hydroelectric dam in the Amazon. In 2012
Venezuela began the process of leaving the
court’s jurisdiction. While the court’s word
is supposed to be final, its mechanisms for
enforcing its rulings are weak.
That will matter more as it wades into
Latin America’s culture wars. In 2012 it is-
sued a liberal ruling on in-vitro fertilisa-
tion, saying thatlife begins gradually, not at
the moment of conception. It may invoke
that principle when it comes to hear cases
on the touchyissue ofabortion.
The same-sex marriage ruling has
pepped up activists. If it does not prompt
governments to rewrite laws, it will pro-
vide a basis for challenging them in nation-
al courts. Iván Chanis, a lawyer in Panama,
is preparing a brief on same-sex marriage
for his country’s supreme court and help-
ing in a case in Guatemala. Herman
Duarte, the founder of Igualitos, a gay-preliminary judgments of its own. At first
countries saw the IACHR, which operates
under the aegis of the Organisation of
American States (OAS), as a complement
to their own judicial systems. But over the
past decade it has become a supranational
supreme court for human rights.
That shift has happened in part because
in the mid-2000s the court invented the
doctrine of “conventionality control”. This
obliges national states and judiciaries to
make their constitutions and laws compat-
ible with human-rights treaties their coun-
tries have ratified. This principle gives the
court, whose budget is a puny $5m, the
power, in theoryat least, to compel signa-
tories of the human-rights convention to
change their constitutions and laws. The
European Court of Human Rights, which
spends nearly 20 times that amount, has
no such power.Court in the crossfire
In its first decades the IACHRruled mainly
on cases stemming from violations of hu-
man rights by dictatorships in the 1970s
and 1980s. It ordered governments to inves-
tigate atrocities and compensate victims.
Its ban on amnesties for such crimes gave
legal grounds for courts in Argentina, El
Salvador and Guatemala to try alleged per-
petrators. It provided justification for jail-
ing Alberto Fujimori, Peru’s president in
the 1990s, on charges of violating human
rights. (On February 2nd the IACHRis dueHuman rightsThe mouse that ruled
SAN JOSÉ
A regional court tells countries to permit gay people to marry each other. That will
provoke resistanceThe Americas
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