The ICCLA Project: Latin American Public Law or Global Public Law in Latin America?

ICCLA is portrayed as the common public law of the region that emerges, somehow spontaneously, through judicial dialogue among the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) and Latin American national courts. I question this assumption, arguing that it is an academic project centered on a German conception of European constitutionalism (Gemeineuropäisches Verfassungsrecht). For this, I trace the ideological and theoretical genesis of this project until its current manifestations, which reveal more a transregional academic dialogue than a Latin American legal practice. There are, for sure, some features of a regional judicial dialogue. However, I doubt that these reveal a pluralistic conversation. Instead, it seems to denote more a monologue promoted by the IACHR. This, in turn, raises serious doubts about the emergence of ius commune in Latin America.