La Corte africana dei diritti dell’uomo e dei popoli tra judicial borrowing e costruzione di una grammatica africana dei diritti

Abstract

The article discusses the role of judicial borrowing in the jurisprudence of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, exploring the relationship between judicial dialogue, the construction of interpretive authority, and the development of an autonomous African grammar of rights. Through a qualitative analysis of selected significant decisions, the contribution reconstructs the ways in which the Court has drawn upon the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, showing how references to foreign precedents played, particularly during the Court’s early years, a crucial role in institutional consolidation and legitimation. At the same time, the analysis demonstrates that these external models are progressively internalised, reinterpreted, and adapted to the African context, thereby contributing to the development of an autonomous body of jurisprudence. In this perspective, the African Court emerges as a space of tension between the universalism of rights, persistent epistemic asymmetries, and the search for African solutions for African problems.

Keywords: African Court on Human and People’s Rights, judicial borrowing, regional human rights systems, epistemic asymmetries, African grammar of rights.