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
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“Every thing in his composition was little; and he had all the weaknesses of a little mind, without any of the virtues, or even the vices, of a great one.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“Viewed freely, the English language is the accretion and growth of every dialect, race, and range of time, and is both the free and compacted composition of all.”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
“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)