International courts are increasingly called upon to adjudicate socially divisive disputes. They are therefore exposed to a heightened risk of backlash that questions their authority and impedes the implementation of their judgments. This article puts forward an analytical framework for mapping the resilience techniques used by international courts to counter this growing resistance. Case studies involve the Court of Justice of the European Union, which has been cautious in its stance regarding democratic backsliding in Hungary and Poland, and the Caribbean Court of Justice, which has engaged in legal diplomacy while adjudicating both on the land rights of indigenous groups and on Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Queer and Intersex (LGBTQI) rights. It is argued that, in order to effectively avoid and mitigate backlash, international courts should deploy resilience techniques that go beyond merely exercising their judicial function. The successful deployment of resilience techniques can allow international courts to become significant actors in global governance during a time of crisis for the international liberal order.

International courts regularly cite each other, partly as a means of building legitimacy. This study aims to show that judicial dialogue among the regional human rights courts and the Human Rights Committee has an additional effect: it contributes to the construction of a rights-based global constitutionalism. Judicial dialogue among the human rights courts is purposeful because the courts see themselves as embedded in, and contributing to, a global human rights legal system. Cross-citation among the human rights courts advances the construction of rights-based global constitutionalism in that it provides a basic degree of coordination among the regional courts. The jurisprudence of the United Nations Human Rights Committee (HRC), as an authoritative interpreter of core international human rights norms, plays the role of a central focal point for the decentralized coordination of jurisprudence. Using original data, this study demonstrates the extent of citations among the regional human rights courts and from them to the HRC. The network of regional courts and the HRC is building an emergent institutional structure for global rights-based constitutionalism.