Part I State Obligations and Rights Protected, Ch.IV Suspension of Guarantees, Interpretation, and Application, Art.29: Restrictions Regarding Interpretation

Abstract

This chapter explains Article 29, which is one of the core provisions of the American Convention on Human Rights (ACHR) and of the inter-American system of protection as a whole. It does not only contain the technical rules that aim to protect the Convention from a restrictive interpretation that would be based on domestic laws or other international instruments. Article 29 is the legal basis of the remarkable praetorian hermeneutics rules with which innovative protection of rights is built from the very first case during the 1980s. It is structured in four paragraphs but does contain two set of rules, with different purposes. The first (Article 29-a) prohibits the use of the ACHR to suppress or restrict abusively the exercise or the rights and freedoms of the Convention. The second set of rules (Article 29-b, c, and d) contains “savings clauses” aiming at ensuring the most favorable protection of the individual if a better protection is provided by another source, such as domestic laws or other treaty (Article 29-b); the 1948 American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man or other international acts of the same nature (Article 29-d); or any other source protecting rights or guarantees inherent in the human personality or derived from democracy (Article 29-c).