The Abolition of the Imposition of the Death Penalty on Persons who Were Juveniles When They Committed Their Crimes

The United States, one of the original twenty-one founding members of the Organization of American States (OAS), is the only one of the founding members not to have ratified the American Convention on Human Rights, the core human rights treaty of the inter-American system. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights—the supervisory human rights body of the OAS—continues to apply the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man to all OAS member states that have not accepted the American Convention. The United States, however, routinely rejects decisions of the Commission as non-binding, but this paper suggests that the US Supreme Court in fact does pay attention to Commission decisions.