Pérez on Structural Remedies and Policy Making

PhD student Edward Pérez authors book chapter on structural remedies and policy making by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

10 April 2025

PhD student member Edward Pérez has authored a book chapter on structural remedies and policy making by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. The chapter, which appears in the Netherlands Yearbook of International Law 2022, provides an in-depth description of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights’ role as a policy maker through its structural remedies, the alternative ways in which it intervenes from a public policy perspective, and the possible rationales that justify why it intervenes one way or another.

Using the public policy cycle as a roadmap for this classification, the chapter concludes that the Inter-American Court has intervened in domestic policy cycles through agenda setting, policy formulation, and either ordering policy implementation or requiring policy evaluation – with the second of these alternatives being favoured by the Court. The Court’s rationales, meanwhile, are more elusive. The chapter suggests that variables such as the year the decision was issued, the State responsible, and the participation of certain victims’ counsel, among others, contribute directly to the Court’s approach to designing structural remedies.