Laurence Burgorgue-Larsen and Amaya Úbeda de Torres, THE INTER-AMERICAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS: CASE-LAW AND COMMENTARY Oxford: Oxford University Press (www.oup.com), 2011. lix + 886 pp. ISBN 9780199588787. £125.
| Pages | 115-117 |
| DOI | 10.3366/elr.2013.0150 |
| Published date | 01 January 2013 |
| Author | Jean Allain |
| Date | 01 January 2013 |
It is now twenty years since I was a Fellow of the Organisation of American States based at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in Costa Rica writing a masters’ thesis. During my year in San José, the Court was given a permanent home, but the proceedings – rare as they were – took place in a make-shift courtroom which consisted of four tables and the equivalent of lawn chairs.
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights became functional two years after the American Convention on Human Rights came into force in 1978. Resembling the Council of Europe human rights system before Protocol 11, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights brings claims to the Court on behalf of individual petitioners. For all intents and purposes, jurisdictionally the Court is a Latin-American entity: a limited number of Caribbean States have accepted the Court's jurisdiction while neither the United States nor Canada have made such a declaration.
The evolution of the Court can be measured by the nature of the English language books which sought to study its functioning. The first to appear in 1982 (a revised, 4th edition appeared in 1995) was the
By 2003, Jo Pasqualucci's
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