Trapped Between Legal Systems:
Value of Precedent for the Inter-American Court of Human Rights
Abstract
This article seeks to determine whether the rulings of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights constitute primary or subsidiary sources of law. For that purpose the precedent system, characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon tradition, is contrasted with the way in which said tribunal rules. The article analyzes, first, how the precedent system works, focusing in the concept of stare decisis. Then a contrast between the way in which the Inter-American Court and the tribunals in the precedent system rule, is made, in order to determine why the Court in question refers in its decisions to its own jurisprudence. The analysis deals with this issue both from a theoretical and normative perspective, as well as from a case law and practical one. The states part of the Inter-American system should not be indiferent to the answer to the question presented in this paper, since they have surrender part of their sovereignty to a supranational institution, and understanding how it decides is the minimum than can be expected from it.
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