Our book seeks to offer a thorough and critical analysis of selected rights of the American
Convention on Human Rights. The Inter- American Court of Human Rights and Inter-
American Commission on Human Rights are charged with interpreting the American
Convention. Consequently, over the course of this volume, we will closely examine their
assessment of these rights, with emphasis on the Court’s binding decisions. We have chosen
those American Convention rights that have been most developed by the Court and
Commission, including the rights to equality, life, humane treatment, personal liberty,
property, due process, and judicial protection, as well as freedom of expression and reparations.
In this way, we do not suggest that other human rights are somehow “less essential”;
to the contrary, we strongly support the current view in international human rights law that
civil, political, social, economic, and cultural rights are all fundamental and indivisible
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