Best Evidence: The Role of Information in Domestic Judicial Enforcement of International Human Rights Agreements

Abstract

Independent domestic courts play important roles in enforcing international human rights agreements, thereby providing a mechanism by which international institutions can affect government policy+ Yet this enforcement power is constrained not only by independence but also by the courts' ability to overcome information problems+ Domestic courts' enforcement power depends on information in two ways: the costs of producing legally admissible evidence of abuses and the applicable legal standards of proof+ When countries ratify international agreements, judicial enforcement can improve government practices when evidence-production costs and standards of proof are low, but not otherwise+ With respect to personal integrity rights violations, evidence is especially difficult to obtain, and standards of proof are high, meaning that the courts will not be able to constrain government practices+ By contrast, evidence-production costs and standards of proof are lower for other civil rights violations, so courts will be able to prosecute offenders and bring governments into line with their international commitments+ Consistent with this theory, I find that commitments to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights~ICCPR! have significantly improved governments' respect for the freedoms of speech, association, assembly, and religion+ With respect to personal integrity rights, however, I find that commitments to the ICCPR have not improved government practices+ Do commitments to international institutions have independent effects on state behavior? This central question in the international relations literature has received critical attention in recent years, resulting in both theory and empirical evidence regarding the effects of commitments to international institutions in a variety of

Uncovering Patterns Among Latent Variables: Human Rights and De Facto Judicial Independence

“…Though the relationship depends upon whether and to what degree our empirical models account for uncertainty in the measurement of latent constructs, increased de facto judicial independence appears to be associated with a substantial decrease in human rights abuses. Overall, the results provide strong support for theoretical and empirical claims that the existence of independent courts is associated with greater respect for human rights (Cross, 1999;Powell and Staton, 2009;Lupu, 2013). Lagged Outcome Measure: An interval variable that captures the degree to which a state respects human rights in a previous year (t-1).…”

Human Rights Texts: Converting Human Rights Primary Source Documents into Data

“…It is our hope that researchers from all different fields will use a variety of statistical analyses and machine learning algorithms to better understand the content of these documents and how this content has evolved over time and in response to political and reporting changes. More generally, these datasets, coupled with the existing human coding schemes, automated coding algorithms, and innovative new research designs [20,22,[64][65][66], will allow scholars to more thoroughly analyze reports of human rights abuse and therefore extend and contribute to the growing human rights literature.…”

Complying with Human Rights

“…The analysis supports the findings of Poe and Tate (1994) and furthermore shows that violations of human rights decrease during a regime change toward democracy and increase when a regime develops from democracy to a hybrid regime. In this connection, several authors emphasize the importance of independent domestic courts that positively influence the respect of human rights and treaty compliance (for example, Apodaca 2002;Camp Keith 2002;Conrad 2014;Conrad and Ritter 2013;Cross 1999;Lupu 2013a;Powell and Staton 2009). Similarly, Lupu (2015) shows that more legislative veto players positively influence the effects of human rights treaties.…”