The Image of The Inter-American Court of Human Rights as an Agent of Democratic Transformation: A Tool of Self-Validation

Natalia Torres Zúñiga

doi:10.12795/araucaria.2021.i46.24

Authors

Natalia Torres Zúñiga Norwegian Centre for Human Rights, University of Oslo

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.12795/araucaria.2021.i46.24

Keywords:

transformación democrática, democracia representativa, autovalidación, autorreferencialidad, progreso, Tribunales Internacionales de Derechos Humanos, igualdad

Abstract

This paper provides a critical analysis of the premises and arguments put forward by the Ius Constitutionale Commune en America Latina project to ground the image of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights as an agent of democratic transformation. It highlights three critical aspects: 1. the profile of the Court is constructed by legal scholars relying on self-validation and self-referentiality, 2. that image validates the idea that lawyers and the judiciary are agents of transformation ruling over local spaces from above, thereby discarding people as the central subjects of change and democratization, and 3. the concept of representative democracy becomes a device that secures the self-validating dynamics of the image of the Court as democracy builder.

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