UN Human Rights Treaty Bodies Talking to Domestic Adjudicators Through Their Quasi-judicial Work: An Examination of CERD and CEDAW

ABSTRACT: The article examines the merit of UN treaty bodies' accumulated case law as a resource for domestic adjudicators, i.e., courts and quasi-judicial bodies (such as national human rights institutions) addressing human rights complaints at the national level. It has the objective of assessing the extent to which treaty bodies are "talking to" an audience beyond the parties in the case. Starting from a view that sees impact on national adjudicators as the key issue for treaty bodies' rulings on individual complaints, the article assesses to what extent the way that treaty bodies are exercising this role fits in this view. The study's focus is on two UN treaty bodies with a broadly similar output in quantitative terms, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CmERD) and the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CmEDAW).