Human Rights Treaties and Constitutional Block

This chapter provides a theoretical analysis, from the perspective of the Inter-American System of Human Rights, of some of the consequences that produce the incorporation of human rights treaties into the constitutional block. The main effect is that the Constitution ceases to be the fundamental norm of a State, because it remains permanently under the domain of the American Convention on Human Rights and other treaties of the Inter-American System, and above all, the jurisprudence emanating from its main guardian, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. This is achieved thanks to the operating rules of Inter-American Law (which grant considerable freedom to the interpreter) and the conventionality control doctrine, which orders local judges to give preference to international criteria over national ones when determining their sentences.