Undermining the authority of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights: cases of state’s weaponization of the value of transparency

Abstract Resistance to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR), in recent years, has taken new shapes, as States ‘weaponise’ the discourse of impartiality, publicity and other judicial values to undermine the authority of the IACtHR through legal criticism, whether ordinary (resistance) or extraordinary (backlash) aiming to demolish the credibility of the IACtHR through manufacturing criticism against its transparency. In this article, based on the recent case law of the Court, we analyse eight cases of this conduct and the Court’s reaction to it, and propose four categories of State behaviour of criticism against the transparency of the Inter-American Court, including (i) State attempts to reform to the Court, invoking transparency grounds, (ii) Treaty withdrawal based upon the alleged lack of transparency, (iii) Deliberate non-compliance with reparation measures through non-transparency allegations, and (iv) Direct attack on the authority of the Court through massive disqualification or recusal of judges.