Domestic and regional courts have a relevant role not only
in applying international law but also in developing it. This paper aims to
critically analyze how regional human rights courts and domestic courts
decided cases regarding the right to family reunification in the context
of migration. This right flows from and assures the human right to family,
an essential institution to democracy. First, it provides an overview of the
right to family reunification. Next, it discusses cases from the Inter-Ame-
rican Court of Human Rights (IACHR) and from the European Court of
Human Rights (ECHR), observing that the African Court of Justice and
Human Rights has no cases in this regard. It further presents cases on fa-
mily reunification contained in the Oxford International Law in Domestic
Courts (ILDC) database. Finally, it concludes that regional human rights
courts have played a key role in strengthening and specifying the right
to family reunification. Domestic courts, on their turn, provide different
contours to this topic, and their decisions gravitate among a spectrum.
In one extreme is the child’s best interest principle and the family as a
lynchpin to the society; on the other, it is the national security interest.
However, all the decisions presented recognize protection for family reu-
nification, even if only on exceptional or humanitarian grounds.
