Composition
As stipulated by Chapter VIII of the Convention, the Court consists of seven judges of the highest moral authority from the Organization's member states. These judges are elected to six-year terms by the OAS General Assembly; each judge may be reelected for an additional six-year term.
Unlike the commissioners of the Inter-American Commission, judges are not required to recuse themselves from hearing cases involving their home countries; however no member state may have more than one representative judge serving on the Court at any time. In the event a member state is party to a case as a defendant does not have a representative judge sitting on the Court, the member state is entitled to appoint a judge to the court ad hoc for the case.
After the Convention came into force on 18 July 1978, the first election of judges took place on 22 May 1979. The new Court first convened on 29 June 1979 at the Organization of American States Headquarters in Washington, D.C., United States.
Read more about this topic: Inter-American Court Of Human Rights
Famous quotes containing the word composition:
“When I think of God, when I think of him as existent, and when I believe him to be existent, my idea of him neither increases nor diminishes. But as it is certain there is a great difference betwixt the simple conception of the existence of an object, and the belief of it, and as this difference lies not in the parts or composition of the idea which we conceive; it follows, that it must lie in the manner in which we conceive it.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)
“There is singularly nothing that makes a difference a difference in beginning and in the middle and in ending except that each generation has something different at which they are all looking. By this I mean so simply that anybody knows it that composition is the difference which makes each and all of them then different from other generations and this is what makes everything different otherwise they are all alike and everybody knows it because everybody says it.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“Modern Western thought will pass into history and be incorporated in it, will have its influence and its place, just as our body will pass into the composition of grass, of sheep, of cutlets, and of men. We do not like that kind of immortality, but what is to be done about it?”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)