The Migration of Human Rights Norms: Understanding the Causes of Transjudicial Conversation in the Philippine Context

Abstract

This paper explores the causes of transjudicial conversation phenomenon on human rights norms in the context of the Philippine Supreme Court. Transjudicial conversation refers to a judicial occurrence where a domestic court cross-cites foreign judicial opinions. Analysis of the decisions delivered by the Philippine High Court from 1987 to 2019 on issues involving free speech, religious freedom, and environmental rights revealed that the court is an interlocutor in the transjudicial conversation phenomenon. The examination of these cases alongside relevant literature showed that the motivations behind this engagement might be attributed to the genealogical linkages between the domestic rights guarantees and their foreign counterparts, the historical-political alliances between the interlocutor courts, the constitutional system of the borrowing courts, and the foreign academic trainings of the judge who pens the decision.