Law and Politics in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights

Abstract

International courts are increasingly affecting domestic and international politics and are receiving increased attention in political science research. In addition to their political importance, international courts provide new opportunities for testing theories of judicial politics, yet further progress requires access to data, particularly on the courts that have so far received less scrutiny. This article introduces a new database on Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) judgments. The database contains information on case proceedings, judicial behavior, judgment content, the actors involved, and compliance with remedial orders. The current version of the database contains data on 201 IACtHR cases. We illustrate how the database can be used to address important questions in judicial politics by analyzing whether the propensity of the IACtHR to rule against a responding state correlates with the positions taken by the same state early in the proceedings before the court. We find evidence of such a relationship.