The Central American and the Caribbean Courts of Justice (CACJ and CCJ) are two recently established Regional International Courts. While these two Court have design features similar to the Court of Justice of the EU (compulsory jurisdiction, private access, and preliminary ruling), they have been entrenched in institutional contexts in which supra-nationality is absent.
This article seeks to understand whether and how the two Courts became key factors for the establishment of embedded Central American and Caribbean regional legal systems, and the ways in which adopting European legal and jurisprudential principles contributed to the creation of supra-national laws in institutional contexts in which supra-nationality is absent.
This article inquires, firstly, into the CACJ and CCJ’s adoption of European legal and jurisprudential principles (the method of teleological interpretation, the legal principle of direct applicability, and the ‘structural’ doctrines of direct effect, and supremacy of Community Law) in their decisions; secondly, the reasons that led the two Courts to adopt these doctrines; and thirdly, the reception of these doctrines within the Central American and Caribbean legal and political fields. The article concludes by considering the insights that the Central American and Caribbean experiences bring to theories of legal diffusion and legal transplants, as well as theories of authority and legitimacy of ICs.1
Methodologically, the article combines comparative legal analysis of the relevant case-law with 63 semi-structured qualitative interviews with the key personnel of the two Courts (such as the judges, registrars, and others) as well as with key interlocutors of the two Courts (such as politicians, lawyers, civil servants, private business, and civil society groups). The empirical field work used reflexive sociology in order to gather the collective biographies of the stakeholders surrounding the two Courts.
