In Chapter 3, I examine patterns of general deterrence in the European and Inter-American Courts of Human Rights.I begin with a discussion of the practices and procedures of the European and Inter-American Courts of Human Rights. Next, I develop a research design to assess general deterrence. I begin by discussing the outcome of interest - regional court effectiveness. In this discussion, I distinguish conceptually and empirically between compliance and effectiveness. To empirically analyze general regional court deterrence, I first examine the influence of regional court presence on respect for rights and find that the presence of the court in the region is not positively associated with better respect for human rights. Next, I examine the influence of regional court activity by looking at the influence of the number of adverse judgments rendered in the region on respect for rights. I find that European Court activity is not significantly associated with greater respect for rights. However, the activity of the Inter-American Court is significantly associated with greater respect for rights. I conclude with a discussion of these divergent findings.

Chapter 2 develops my theory of regional human rights court deterrence. I begin by defining and explaining regional human rights court deterrence, focusing on two types of deterrence: general and specific. I then discuss two mechanisms of deterrence: prosecutorial and social.The chapter then proceeds by examining the role of the executive in regional court deterrence, specifically the role of the executive in the adoption, administration, monitoring, and enforcement of human rights policy. I argue that human rights policy change is costly for the executive, and as a result, the executive must have the capacity and willingness and respond to adverse regional court judgments with human rights policy change. With respect to capacity, I argue that the executive is more likely to undertake feasible human rights policy changes in response to adverse regional court judgments. I also argue that the executive is more likely to respond to adverse judgments with human rights policy change when the executive has access to outside resources or when the state is fiscally flexible. With respect to willingness, I argue that the executive is more likely to undertake human rights policy change when the executive faces pressure from the mass public, economic elites, or political elites.

Chapter 8 concludes by discussing the book's broader implications. I begin by providing a brief summary of my main argument and findings. I then compare the findings across Europe and the Americas and provide possible explanations for the divergent effects. I then turn to the role of regional human rights courts in the international human rights regime. In doing so, I consider the implications of the book's findings for designing effective international human rights institutions as well as the design of regional human rights arrangements. I conclude by highlighting several avenues for future research, including examining general deterrence more carefully, the role of strategic regional judicial behavior, the potential for complementarity or competition among institutions in the international human rights regime, and backlash in the international human rights regime.

This chapter defends the view that free will skeptics can endorse general deterrence as a justifiable aim of legal punishment. It does not claim that it is the justifiable aim, or the main aim, but rather that it is a justifiable aim among others. It takes as its target Derk Pereboom’s claim that general deterrence is not a justifiable aim of punishment since it suffers from the “use” objection, according to which general deterrence is wrong because it involves harming some, without their consent, in order to benefit others. The author responds by arguing that the use objection myopically focuses on only one aspect of a system of general deterrent punishment, and that, when we take full account of the complexity of this sort of punishment within a reasonably just legal system, we can see that it need not involve an impermissible kind of use. It further argues that Pereboom’s positive account of how to respond to crime is insufficient for good social policy. It concludes by offering a sketch of an account that combines the measures that Pereboom advocates with others designed to promote general deterrence.

The free will skeptic aims to articulate a theory for treatment of criminals that rejects retributivism, since this justification for punishment is inconsistent with the skeptic’s outlook, but nevertheless actually works in the real world. In past versions of such an account I’ve emphasized the quarantine analogy for incapacitation together with the value of rehabilitation and reintegration (Pereboom 2001, 2014), and I’ve endorsed Gregg Caruso’s embedding of the view within a public health model (Caruso 2016, 2017; Pereboom and Caruso 2018). Recently I’ve paid special attention to the permissibility and the limits of special and general deterrence (Pereboom 2017b, 2019). Here I set out this view and develop it in certain key respects in response to the latest objections raised against it.