How does international law protect human rights?  We trace the development of human rights, focusing on the international response to the atrocities of World War II and the rapid pace of human rights conventions.  We demonstrate how the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights started a wave of other conventions designed to codify the treatment to which every human is entitled.  Not every state can achieve the wide array of protections these documents outline, but the UN has established methods for reporting violations that provide some minor satisfaction. The last half of the chapter is devoted to a discussion of regional human rights mechanisms, focusing on the European, Inter-American, and African systems and noting their jurisdictional differences. Finally, the development of mechanisms to respond to genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity are detailed, including the criminal tribunals set up for specific atrocities and the International Criminal Court.

At the regional level, by far the most prolific in terms of jurisprudence is the European Court of Human Rights: between its first judgment on the right to life in September 1995 and through late November 2020, 3,875 judgments concerned the right, of which 476 were issued by the Court’s Grand Chamber. But the Inter-American Court of Human Rights has also made a significant contribution to our understanding of the scope and legal status of the right to life, while the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights brought together learning at the regional and global level in an important General Comment issued in 2015. A major gap in regional human rights protection exists across Asia and the Pacific.

Significant practice has been accumulated on the right to reparation for victims of armed conflict, as a result of the work of international human rights mechanisms, domestic courts, and States undergoing transitional justice processes and setting up domestic reparation programmes. This chapter looks at some of that practice in a nuanced way. It considers the interplay on reparation’s issues taking place between international human rights mechanisms like the European Court of Human Rights and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and domestic reparation programmes such as those established in Colombia or Guatemala. This interplay is regulated by the principle of subsidiarity, a key principle of international law. This principle manifests itself in different ways in international adjudication, including on issues related to reparations as international human rights mechanisms, including the ECHR and the IACtHR, exercise deference to States in various ways. This interplay poses major challenges as through it the scope and reach of this right is defined, and the role of these bodies decided. This Chapter looks at actual practice by these tribunals, and how they could face that interplay without diminishing their role or the content of the right to reparation

Chapter 1 provides an overview of different theories of justice and how they can inform the development of a civil dimension of international criminal law. This chapter also traces the evolution of different dichotomies of the legal duty to provide reparations and the right to reparation: from perspectives of state versus state, to state versus individual, to individual versus individual. It also outlines the development of a duty to repair for individual perpetrators alongside states’ duty to repair. This introductory chapter thus provides the theoretical foundation that supports the analysis in the following chapters and it sets out the main themes that are discussed throughout the book. This chapter also lays out and discusses some challenges and counterarguments to the inclusion of a reparative dimension to international criminal justice from a theoretical perspective. Finally, this chapter draws on the enlightening jurisprudence of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

This chapter empirically examines the conditions under which the executive has the capacity to respond to adverse judgments with human rights policy change. I argue that the executivehas greater capacity to adopt, administer, monitor, and enforce human rights policy when policy change is more feasible. Specifically, civil and political rights improvements are more directly within the executive's control than are physical integrity rights improvements. I show that civil and political rights judgments are more strongly associated with human rights gains than physical integrity rights judgments in Europe and the Americas. Beyond the feasibility of policy change, I also argue that the executive has greater capacity to respond to adverse judgments with policy change when the state has access to outside resources. I show that adverse judgments are positively related to respect for rights as the state's creditworthiness (institutional investor credit rating) increases.

In Chapter 6, I argue that regional human rights courts are more likely to deter future human rights abuses when the executive is willing to adopt, administer, monitor, and enforce human rights policy as a result of elite pressure. I argue that there are two types of elites important for generating executive willingness: economic elites and political elites. With respect to economic elites, I show that the executive is more willing to adopt, administer, monitor, and enforce human rights policy following an adverse judgment when the state is vulnerable to a loss of economic benefits, like foreign direct investment. With respect to political elites, I argue that the executive is more likely to adopt comprehensive human rights policy in expectation of national judicial or legislative implementation. I find evidence that national judicial implementation and subsequently executive human rights policy change, is more likely when the national judiciary is powerful. I argue that national legislative implementation of adverse regional court judgments is more likely as the size of the legislative opposition grows. I find limited support for the role of the size of the legislative opposition, and I suggest this may be due to key institutional design features of the legislature.

In Chapter 3, I examine patterns of general deterrence in the European and Inter-American Courts of Human Rights.I begin with a discussion of the practices and procedures of the European and Inter-American Courts of Human Rights. Next, I develop a research design to assess general deterrence. I begin by discussing the outcome of interest - regional court effectiveness. In this discussion, I distinguish conceptually and empirically between compliance and effectiveness. To empirically analyze general regional court deterrence, I first examine the influence of regional court presence on respect for rights and find that the presence of the court in the region is not positively associated with better respect for human rights. Next, I examine the influence of regional court activity by looking at the influence of the number of adverse judgments rendered in the region on respect for rights. I find that European Court activity is not significantly associated with greater respect for rights. However, the activity of the Inter-American Court is significantly associated with greater respect for rights. I conclude with a discussion of these divergent findings.

Chapter 2 develops my theory of regional human rights court deterrence. I begin by defining and explaining regional human rights court deterrence, focusing on two types of deterrence: general and specific. I then discuss two mechanisms of deterrence: prosecutorial and social.The chapter then proceeds by examining the role of the executive in regional court deterrence, specifically the role of the executive in the adoption, administration, monitoring, and enforcement of human rights policy. I argue that human rights policy change is costly for the executive, and as a result, the executive must have the capacity and willingness and respond to adverse regional court judgments with human rights policy change. With respect to capacity, I argue that the executive is more likely to undertake feasible human rights policy changes in response to adverse regional court judgments. I also argue that the executive is more likely to respond to adverse judgments with human rights policy change when the executive has access to outside resources or when the state is fiscally flexible. With respect to willingness, I argue that the executive is more likely to undertake human rights policy change when the executive faces pressure from the mass public, economic elites, or political elites.

Beginning with two examples from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, Chapter 1 introduces the motivating puzzle: Why do regional human rights courts sometimes deter future human rights abuses and other times do not? I posit that regional human rights court deterrence is conditional on domestic political factors. I argue that deterrence is more likely when the chief executive has the capacity and willingness to respond to adverse regional court judgments.This chapter then examines three key institutional design features that make regional human rights courts uniquely suited to influence human rights practices, including exclusive membership, mechanism of influence (judgments rather than recommendations), and institutional independence. I then provide a descriptive comparison of the two regional human rights courts examined in the book: the European and Inter-American Courts of Human Rights and argue that a comparative approach is beneficial for advancing our understanding of regional court deterrence. This chapter concludes with a brief discussion of the organization of the book.

Chapter 8 concludes by discussing the book's broader implications. I begin by providing a brief summary of my main argument and findings. I then compare the findings across Europe and the Americas and provide possible explanations for the divergent effects. I then turn to the role of regional human rights courts in the international human rights regime. In doing so, I consider the implications of the book's findings for designing effective international human rights institutions as well as the design of regional human rights arrangements. I conclude by highlighting several avenues for future research, including examining general deterrence more carefully, the role of strategic regional judicial behavior, the potential for complementarity or competition among institutions in the international human rights regime, and backlash in the international human rights regime.

This chapter empirically examines the role of executive willingness as a result of mass public pressure in regional human rights court deterrence. More specifically, I show that the executive is more likely to adopt, administer, monitor, and enforce human rights policy following an adverse judgment when executive job security is low. The presence of an adverse Inter-American Court judgment two years prior to an election year is associated with greater respect for rights than the presence of an adverse Inter-American Court judgment two years prior to a nonelection year. I also show that the presence of adverse European Court judgments two years before an election are associated with greater respect for rights when the executive expects to face a competitive election as opposed to a noncompetitive election. I also argue that the mass public may place pressure on the executive not to undertake human rights policy change following an adverse judgment and when states face threats to social and political stability, and I find that the executive is unlikely to forgo the use of repression following an adverse regional court judgment in the face of large social and political threats in society. I conclude by examining the conflicting types of pressure the mass public can place on the executive.

In this final empirical chapter, I show that executive capacity and willingness complement one another in generating executive human rights policy change following adverse regional human rights court judgment. I show that following an adverse European Court judgment, in the face of mass public pressure, executive human rights policy change is likely regardless of the level of executive capacity. However, high-capacity European executives are more willing to engage in human rights policy change as a result of economic elite pressure than low-capacity European executives. With respect to the Americas, I show that executives are more likely to engage in human rights policy change following an adverse Inter-American Court judgment when the executive is highly willing as a result of mass public and political elite pressure, and this effect grows in the presence of high executive capacity. Similarly, following an adverse Inter-American Court judgment, highly capable executives are more likely to make human rights policy changes when the executive is highly willing as opposed to unwilling.

Treaty bodies fulfil a range of functions, from promotional activities to monitoring and adjudicating complaints. These tasks, which are taken for granted today, are the result of states’ willingness to vest treaty bodies with the mandate of monitoring compliance. This constituted a remarkable shift away from earlier notions of sovereignty in a system where states were, essentially, the sole authors, interpreters and enforcers of rights and obligations. What accounts for this change and why do states agree to be part of such regimes? This question, which has attracted considerable attention in recent years, poses a particular challenge because it does not seem to conform to the realist views that used to hold considerable sway in international relations, according to which states use institutions as a means to exercise power. Alternative theories emphasise states’ interests or point to ‘acculturation’. This denotes a process of interaction of various actors which generates a pull to build and join credible human rights mechanisms as part of an international order. Indeed, these mechanisms form part of broader international institution building, particularly at the UN level.