law, the interpretation of human rights international standards and, sometimes, the local
legislation, can make the difference for the judicial strategy. Before the existence of
SUMMA, these documents were not systematized and, therefore, it was more difficult to
find and compare them.
For the reasons above mentioned, CEJIL decided to provide better access to the case law
generated by the Interamerican Human Rights System. In order to do so, in addition to
gathering all the information in the same platform, specialized search criteria based on
human rights standards, keywords, and several filters (topic, country, types of resolution,
etc.) were included.
Furthermore, the platform was customized to display aggregated information about a case
by means of a chronological line with milestones, about provisional measures (the ones
dictated by the Court to prevent additional harm), and about the composition of the Court
and the Commission. All this information had to be exportable and analyzable as a whole
and, lastly, the usage of the database had to be intuitive, especially regarding the quick
access and visualization of information.
Database design
Data model: how to structure the database to describe the
judicial response from international bodies?
The model capable of meeting these needs was based on the type of information handled
at the system and in the most common usage of the database. Regarding this last point,
the purpose was to facilitate the retrieval of information about decisions made by the
bodies and the tracking of legal cases. The goals also included measuring the judicial
response and comparing the commissioners’ decisions on different cases.
The set of elements to be presented is just one among various valid proposals to fulfil the
objectives, and it could be complemented with other elements or adapted to address new
requirements. After several meetings with CEJIL, the following types of documents were
identified:
●
Interamerican Court Judgement
●
Order of the Interamerican Court
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