Justice for All in the Americas? A Quantitative Analysis of Admissibility Decisions in the Inter-American Human Rights System

Simon Zschirnt
Additional contact information
Simon Zschirnt: Department of Social Sciences, Texas A&M International University, Laredo, TX 78041, USA

Laws, 2021, vol. 10, issue 3, 1-23

Abstract: The overwhelming majority of unsuccessful petitions in the Organization of American States’ Inter-American human rights system are unsuccessful because they are dismissed at the pre-admissibility or admissibility phase rather than at the merits phase. Although this preliminary screening of applications constitutes the major obstacle to petitioners seeking justice, there has been relatively little scholarly analysis of the potential interplay of legal and attitudinal factors at this phase. That is, whether this phase may be where the biases that the system has been accused of (i.e., bias against leftist regimes and a “hierarchization” of negative rights and liberties over social justice) manifest themselves. This article fills this gap in the literature by undertaking a comprehensive quantitative analysis of Inter-American Commission on Human Rights admissibility decisions that measures the impact of a broad range of factors and compares the dynamics of admissibility decisions with those of merits decisions. In so doing, it places into context backlash against the system that has led to recent changes in the system’s procedures.

Keywords: Organization of American States; Inter-American human rights system; Inter-American Commission on Human Rights; admissibility (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D78 E61 E62 F13 F42 F68 K0 K1 K2 K3 K4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2075-471X/10/3/56/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2075-471X/10/3/56/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jlawss:v:10:y:2021:i:3:p:56-:d:588202

Access Statistics for this article

Laws is currently edited by Ms. Heather Liang

More articles in Laws from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().