Nowadays, we witness the dynamic transformation of globalized society due to the inexorable intensification and massification of the relations at the international level, so that such transformations generate rights and obligations to all subjects of International Law, who live and establish their relationships under the aegis of an ideal of international solidarity and peace.

What in December 2009 was still an embryonic idea, in 2010 it was made reality with the creation of the Centre for the Study of International Courts at University of São Paulo’s Faculty of Law (NETI-USP), which was one of the first – if not the first – Brazilian research group focused on understanding International Courts in their historical and systemic logic.

If, at the beginning, as expected, the group had a timid performance, seeking primarily to establish the theoretical contours of its object of study, today NETI-USP has consolidated itself, with its own methodology and with a line of bold and concatenated research with contemporary discussions – as one of the largest groups of international law studies in the country, bringing together approximately 70 researchers, from different backgrounds, from undergraduates to PhDs, from north to south of the country.

During the years 2010 and 2011, the group dedicated itself to the study of the performance of the International Courts, so that, in 2012 and 2013, it would look into an instigating investigation of whether there is a conflict of competence amongst the existing courts – considering their at times concurrent jurisdiction – interpreted from a systemic point of view, together with the harmony and international cooperation established between the International Courts.

In the years 2014 and 2015, NETI-USP sought to recognize parameters for the interpretation of International Courts’ effectiveness, having concluded that the effectiveness of its decisions is not limited to the quantitative aspects of compliance with jurisdictional provisions. The effectiveness of the International Courts, which truly contributes to international law, also considers other elements, such as access to justice, the reaffirmation of international jurisdiction and also the critical reinterpretation of the mapping of international law’s sources in international courts.

In 2016, the Centre dedicated its work to investigating the individual’s access, as a subject of an International Law that is increasingly developed based on the promotion and guarantee of Human Rights, to International Courts and Tribunals and to the jurisdictional bodies of International Organisations. In the year 2017, the Group directed its focus to the investigation of the impacts of the performance of these International Courts on domestic law, with its studies directed towards the consequences of the performance and decision-making of each of the Courts monitored by the Centre in the domestic legal system of countries that submit to them.

In 2018, under the central theme of “Procedural Implementation of International Court Decisions”, the Centre focused on the analysis of how these decisions are put into practice in national jurisdictions.

In 2019, NETI-USP celebrated ten years of its foundation. These ten years have been marked by the uninterrupted efforts of its large team of researchers, who worked, since the beginning of its activities, with a focus on the objectives of jurisprudential disclosure, diffusion of the activities of the courts and international courts followed, in addition to the critical analysis of their actions before international law.