The Court traces its authority to the American Convention on Human Rights, which entered into force on July 18, 1978. The first election of judges followed on May 22, 1979, and the new Court convened for the first time on June 29 of that year at OAS headquarters in Washington, D.C., before permanently settling in San Jose. The Convention created a dual system: the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights investigates complaints and attempts resolution, while the Court serves as the judicial body of last resort. Individual citizens cannot bring cases directly -- they must first exhaust the Commission process. Only when a state fails to comply with the Commission's recommendations, or when a case carries particular legal significance, does it reach the courtroom in Costa Rica. This layered approach means the cases that arrive at the Court tend to involve the most serious and systemic violations.

The Court's judgments carry real consequences, even without enforcement troops. In 2001, the Barrios Altos case forced Peru to confront one of the darkest chapters of its internal conflict. In November 1991, members of the state-sponsored Colina Group death squad had killed fifteen people in a Lima neighborhood. The Court ordered Peru to pay $175,000 to each of the four survivors and to the families of those killed, with $250,000 for the family of one victim. But the monetary reparations were only the beginning. Peru was required to repeal two amnesty laws that had shielded the perpetrators, establish extrajudicial killing as a crime in its domestic legal code, publicly apologize, and erect a memorial monument. The ruling demonstrated that the Court's power extends beyond compensation -- it can reshape a nation's legal architecture.

Membership is voluntary, and that voluntariness defines the Court's reach and its frustrations. Around twenty of the thirty-five OAS member states have accepted the Court's jurisdiction, the vast majority in Latin America. But the path has not been smooth. In 1999, under President Alberto Fujimori, Peru announced it was withdrawing from the Court's jurisdiction -- a move reversed by the transitional government of Valentin Paniagua in 2001. Trinidad and Tobago withdrew in 1998 over disagreements about the death penalty. Venezuela followed in 2013 under President Nicolas Maduro, though the opposition National Assembly attempted to nullify that withdrawal in 2019. The Dominican Republic announced its withdrawal in 2014 but never legally completed the process. The United States signed the American Convention on Human Rights but never ratified it. Each withdrawal or refusal carries a message about the tension between sovereignty and accountability.

The Court's advisory opinions have extended its influence well beyond individual cases. In 2017, responding to a request from Colombia, the Court issued Advisory Opinion OC-23/17 recognizing the right to a healthy environment as an autonomous human right under the American Convention. The ruling declared that right "fundamental to the existence of humanity" and established that states must regulate environmental harm, conduct impact assessments, mitigate existing damage, and cooperate across borders on environmental emergencies. In 2025, the Court built on that foundation with Advisory Opinion OC-32/25 on climate change, requested by Chile and Colombia. That opinion affirmed that states must take urgent measures to mitigate climate change, including regulating corporate emissions and setting targets aligned with the 1.5-degree Paris Agreement goal. The Court went further, describing the duty to prevent irreversible environmental damage as a potential jus cogens norm -- a peremptory principle of international law from which no derogation is permitted.

The Court's physical presence in Costa Rica is modest compared to its jurisdictional reach across the hemisphere. Seven judges, elected to six-year terms by the OAS General Assembly, serve not as representatives of their home nations but as independent jurists. They are required to recuse themselves from cases involving their own countries. The qualification standard -- described as requiring the highest moral authority and competency in human rights law -- means in practice that judges must never have been convicted of a crime, expelled from the legal profession, or dismissed from public office. The institution has faced criticism for the opacity of its nomination process and for what some scholars describe as politicization. But for the families of the disappeared, the survivors of state violence, and the communities whose environments have been degraded, the Court in San Jose remains one of the few places in the world where a government can be called to account by its own citizens -- even if those citizens cannot walk through the door themselves.