Balancing justice: Damages awarded by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights

Abstract

International law reparations follow the principle of restitutio in integrum — to make the victim whole. But how do human rights judges apply this principle in practice when the victims are not states, but people whose lives may have been irreparably damaged? We examine this question in the context of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, where judges have frequently dealt with cases of forced disappearance, extrajudicial execution, and other severe physical integrity violations. Inter-American Court judges have substantial discretion in determining the value of awards, which provides the opportunity to create and apply their own criteria for justness. We argue that the awarding of damages is best understood as judges attempting to quantify, and, therefore, compensate suffering. However, judges must balance the goal of compensating suffering with economic and political considerations. We test these implications using an original dataset of monetary damages and victims in Inter-American Court of Human Rights cases through 2019 and find that the severity of rights violations, the number of victims involved in a case, and the identity of victims are associated with the value of monetary damages awarded by the IACtHR.