Dominican Constitutional Court Rules Unconstitutional Instrument Accepting Jurisdiction of the IACHR (November 4, 2014) [1]
On November 4, 2014, the Dominican Constitutional Court (the Court) ruled [3] (Spanish only) unconstitutional the instrument the Dominican Republic deposited with the Organization of American States in 1999 accepting the competence of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR). According to a news article [4], the Court found that “the Senate never issued a resolution to ratify the February 1999 agreement with the rights court as required by the Dominican constitution. Ten judges voted in favor of the ruling, while three judges voted against it.” The Court made its ruling “in response to a complaint submitted by a group of nationalists in the mid-2000s arguing the agreement with the rights court was unconstitutional.” The IACHR condemned [5] the decision, stating that the decision has no basis in international law and that “[t]he American Convention does not establish the possibility that a State that continues to be a party to the treaty can release itself from the jurisdiction of the Inter-American Court.”