Communities of practice in human rights and transformative constitutionalism in Latin America

Abstract

In recent years, a kind of common human rights law has developed in Latin America, what we understand as ius constitutionale commune. At the center of the emergence of this regime are the Inter-American Commission (IACHR) and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (Inter American Court). In this chapter we explore how and why transformative constitutionalism works in Latin America, which is promoted by a group of people who seek to confront violence, social exclusion, and institutional weakness through the law. We maintain that the Inter American Court has developed two aspects that have contributed to its consolidation, in a difficult context.
On the one hand, the Court has legally maintained an evolutionary interpretation of the treaties, together with doctrines of control of conventionality and the constitutionality block, generating regional legal standards. On the other hand, it has developed a social practice, in which it interacts with different national, regional and international actors to advance the human rights agenda.