August 25, 2026 · Heidelberg

Miriam Lorena Henríquez Viñas, dean of the law faculty of Alberto Hurtado University in Chile and a researcher on the ICCAL Lab project team “Judicial Independence as the Cornerstone of Democratic Resilience”, published the open-access article “Conventionality Control: A Means of Democratic Resilience in the Face of Attacks on Judicial Independence”, co-authored with Felipe Díaz Díaz (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile). From an inter-American perspective, the article explores the question that guides the team’s work within the project: how judicial independence can be protected by the Inter-American Human Rights System in the face of the setbacks currently facing Latin America.

Can Conventionality Control shield Judicial Independence?

The study analyzes whether domestic conventionality review can function as a mechanism of democratic resilience in the face of the attacks currently threatening judicial independence in Latin America.

The authors draw on an assessment shared by the UNDP’s 2025 Regional Human Development Report: Latin America is one of the regions where governments most frequently attack their own judicial branches, whether through politicized appointments, mass dismissals, the instrumental use of disciplinary proceedings, political trials based on the content of rulings, the creation of parallel courts, or budget cuts. Recent cases in El Salvador (the dismissal of the Constitutional Chamber in 2021) and Mexico (the 2024 judicial reform) illustrate this regional problem.

Their central hypothesis is that conventionality control alone does not neutralize these attacks, but it does offer judges a normative framework capable of activating capacities for resistance, adaptation, or institutional recovery in the face of them. In other words, conventionality control can be a tool for democratic resilience.

Three Cases, Three Forms of Pressure on the Judiciary

Following sociologist Terence Halliday’s typology, the article distinguishes three ways in which judicial independence can be undermined and examines a paradigmatic case from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights for each:

• The judiciary as an institution — Supreme Court of Justice (Quintana Coello et al.) v. Ecuador (2013): the simultaneous removal of 27 justices by the Ecuadorian Congress in 2004. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights held that the removal of a high court without cause, a competent body, or due process constitutes an attack on the democratic order.
• The judge as an individual — Cordero Bernal v. Peru (2021): the disciplinary dismissal of a judge based on a broad ground (“serious offense”). Although the Inter-American Court did not find the State liable in this case, it specified the standards that any disciplinary proceeding must meet: a legal basis, a competent body, and objective reasoning focused on the decision-making process, not on the content of the ruling.
• The judge as a case—Ríos Avalos et al. v. Paraguay (2021): the impeachment of ministers of the Paraguayan Supreme Court based on the substance of their rulings. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights held that it is prohibited to remove judges based on the content of their decisions, except in cases of intentional misconduct or proven incompetence.

Each of these standards, the authors argue, can be internalized by judges and national legal practitioners to refrain from applying non-conventional norms (resistance), interpret domestic law in accordance with the inter-American standard (adaptation), or comply with the judgments of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (recovery), thereby protecting judicial independence.

The article is directly part of the project that Henríquez Viñas is developing within the ICCAL Lab, “Judicial Independence as the Cornerstone of Democratic Resilience” (2025–2027), which studies judicial independence as an essential element of democratic resilience through a multilevel comparative approach: intraregional, between national systems and their corresponding international frameworks; and transregional, between Latin America and Europe.

The full text is available open access through the the Anuario de Derechos Humanos.

Read the full article in Spanish here.

Recommended citation:

Henríquez Viñas, M. L., & Díaz Díaz, F. (2026). Control de convencionalidad: Un recurso de resiliencia democrática frente a los ataques a la independencia judicial. Anuario de Derechos Humanos, 22(1), 135-156. https://doi.org/10.5354/0718-2279.2026.83729