This Chapter responds to the under-theorization of remedies by outlining and defending the two-track approach that combines individual and systemic remedies with courts playing a more dominant role with respect to the former and a more dialogic role with respect to the latter. Part I examines the roots of compensatory remedies in corrective justice and “right to a remedy” reasoning associated with the common law and Blackstone and Dicey. Part II examines how remedies have increasingly been concerned with preventing future rights violations. Part III outlines the two-track approach and explores its origins in the distinction that supra-national adjudicators often draw between individual and general measures and Chayes’ distinction between traditional and public law litigation. Part IV argues that an exclusive focus on either individual or systemic remedies will be incomplete and produce remedial pathologies. Part V examines how the two-track approach recognizes and responds to the reality of remedial failure. It outlines how cycles of individual and systemic remedies can occur. This allows both litigants and courts to adjust their approach in response to new evidence and new concerns. This allows courts, when warranted, to escalate their remedies when states fail to take reasonable steps to prevent repetitive violations.

This Chapter outlines four methodological and four substantive contributions of the book. By addressing the frequent neglect of remedies in human rights law, the book brings human rights closer to the reality of their frequent violation, especially for less advantaged people. It also examines the inter-relations and cross-fertilization of remedies in domestic and international law. It reveals remedies as a fruitful site for comparative law. This includes American remedial exceptionalism and differences between regional supra-national human rights courts. This Chapter highlights the book’s development of an overarching conceptual structure for remedies. Substantively, the book argues that familiar proportionality principles can improve remedial decision-making and make it more transparent. It also outlines similarities between South African engagement orders and the duty to consult Indigenous peoples. In both cases, engagement can result in consensual agreements, but also can limit rights. The two-track approach recognizes that remedies should compensate for past harms and prevent immediate irreparable harms, but also that they should prevent repetitive violations in the future. Individual remedies can recognize remedial failure and start another cycle of two-track individual and systemic remedies.