Resistance and backlash against the judgments of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights: Study of 11 cases of Reactions of the States against the authority of the Court and the recusation of judges in the “Bedoya Lima” case

Abstract

This article studies the behavior of resistance and backlash against the judgments of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, its effects on the authority of the Court and the means chosen by the States to oppose the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. The article proposes an adaptation to the Inter-American System of the categories of resistance and backlash, used to study other international Courts and Tribunals, that accounts for the legality or illegality of the conducts that oppose the effectiveness of the System, from the viewpoint of rights and prerogatives that the States have in the American Convention. Subsequently, the article studies 11 cases of opposition to the Inter-American System and classifies them according to the legality of the means used by the States, ranging from abusing procedural rights, to wrongfully invoking their constitutional law in order to avoid their international obligations. Finally, the article analyzes the legality, procedure, and effects of the acts of recusation of judges recently carried out by the Colombian agents in the “Bedoya Lima” case and proposes to categorize them according to their consequences in the authority of the Inter-American system.