We are constitutional law, civil rights and human rights scholars and practitioners who have spent decades litigating government abuse cases in the United States. Despite the US legal system’s flaws, our work – from securing a record civil settlement for George Floyd’s family to holding Bolivia’s ex-president accountable in US federal court for the massacre of Indigenous protesters – has demonstrated that US courts can rein in state power and provide a path to accountability. But this pathway is narrowing.
As Donald Trump attacks the courts, weaponizes the Department of Justice, and targets attorneys who challenge his administration, we have been forced to seek justice beyond our borders.
Earlier this year, we requested a thematic hearing at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) on the United States’s violent suppression of protests against federal immigration policies. Never before had the commission granted such a hearing, but the extraordinary nature of the Trump administration’s actions – including allegations of excessive and lethal force against peaceful protesters, attacks on journalists and legal observers, and racial profiling and surveillance – warrants international scrutiny. On 4 August, the commission will hold that hearing.
The IACHR is unfamiliar to most Americans. Together with the inter-American court of human rights, the commission is the bedrock of the hemisphere’s human rights system. For decades, it has served as a safeguard against authoritarianism and state repression in the region, providing an avenue for victims when domestic institutions have failed. While the United States claims it is not bound by the inter-American system’s norms, it remains subject to the commission’s oversight under the American declaration of the rights and duties of man. Condemnation by the commission has directly led to policy changes by countries, including the United States.