Human rights law should meet administrative law. How the Inter-American Court of Human Rights can expand its impact in Latin America with a better understanding of administrative law

Latin America lives in the age of rights. After a period of military dictatorships that perpetrated massive human rights violations, international human rights law significantly impacted Latin American states’ legal systems in the last 40 years. In particular, the Inter-American Human Rights System’s bodies – the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (hereinafter, “IACHR”) and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (hereinafter, the “IA Court” or the “Court”) – were a decisive external force in the transition several countries carried out from military regimes to democracy. Accordingly, they emerged as crucial players in the creation of law and gained legitimacy and influence. To the extent that human rights are the modern legal synonyms of goodness, beauty, and truth, then treaty bodies were established as their modern oracles.  However, the Inter-American system seems to have had only a marginal impact on regional’s long-standing problems such as poverty, corruption, poor state services, weak education and health systems, and corrosive inequality. Why is this so? The basis of the research hypothesis I am proposing is that these human rights bodies have missed the opportunity to produce a more vigorous impact on these issues because they have overlooked the importance of good governance to secure human rights. I will suggest that the leading domestic political actor today is the Executive branch, so it would be inconceivable to relate international human rights law with good governance without the Executive and the administrative State. Understanding the links between the Executive branch and the Administrative State, as its enforcer, with international human rights law is crucial to developing a better comprehension of how to fulfil the human rights promise in Latin America.