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Introduction
Recent years have seen growing resistance to international courts (ICs) in many parts of the world. The most striking example is the Southern African Development Community Tribunal (SADC Tribunal), which became a political target and ultimately was suspended when ruling on the highly controversial question of land rights in Zimbabwe (Nathan, 2013). Although perhaps an extreme example, the SADC Tribunal is not alone in having faced pushback and even backlash. The recent reforms of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in the form of the Brighton Declaration (2012) and resulting Protocols Nos 15 and 16 undoubtedly also implied a form of pushback. This was the first time in the more than fifty years of operation of the ECtHR that the Member States presented systematic critique and questioned its place in European law. The conclusion was that European human rights had to be rebalanced in favour of national institutions, both legal and political (Madsen, 2018b).
The form of political pressure that built up in Europe in the early 2010s, notably in Russia and in the UK, was however not unique to Europe. While Britain contemplated leaving Strasbourg and the ECtHR, yet ended up leaving Brussels and the EU, a number of countries had already left the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR), including Trinidad and Tobago and Venezuela. Moreover, the IACtHR witnessed resistance from domestic courts (Huneeus, 2011) - a phenomenon also well known to EU law, both historically (Alter, 2001) and currently (Dyevre, 2016; Komárek, 2012; Madsen et al., 2017). In the Eurasian region, the newly established Court of Justice of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) represented in reality a step back compared to its predecessor, which could adjudicate cases brought by the regional Commission, and rule on preliminary references and issue advisory opinions when asked by national courts (Kembayev, 2016). In Africa, the SADC Tribunal has not been the only IC under political and legal pressure. A number of other African ICs have also been facing resistance. This includes, for example, the East African Court of Justice (EACJ), which was reformed in the aftermath of a set of rulings on rule-of-law issues in its Member States (Gathii, 2016), or Rwanda's withdrawal from the African Court on Human...