office by popular election and by appointment or designation.” 5 In Reverón Trujillo v. Venezuela, the Court added that Article 23 does not establish the right to have access to public office, but to have such ”under general conditions of equality,” which signifies that the respect and guarantee of that right are fulfilled when “the criteria and procedures for the appointment, promotion, suspension and dismissal [are] reasonable and objective” and when “the people are not the object of discrimination” in the exercise of this right. 6 While neither the Commission nor the representatives alleged a violation of Article 23, the facts, as presented in the Merits Report, would permit noting that the victims claimed to have been the object of arbitrary treatment with respect to their right to continue, under conditions of equality, to exercise their positions in the Congress. This was affirmed in the course of the proceedings before the Court and was a manifest violation of Article 23(1)(c) of the Convention. It should also be recalled that the Court has already held that the guarantees contained in that provision are applicable to every person in the public service and that, consequently, when the continuance of persons in the exercise of this type of function is arbitrarily affected, their political rights are not respected. 7 Although the facts in this case readily fall under the norm of Article 23(1)(c), the decision of the majority also declared 8 that there was an infringement of the work stability of the victims, as a component of the right to work of which they were holders, and, thus, a direct violation of Article 26. That decision was not only not necessary in this specific case, 9 but it was also not pertinent. The pertinent norm of the Convention in this case is that of access to and continuation in public functions under conditions of equality. Those who have public positions are submitted to special rules that can be justified by the nature of the functions that they perform and, therefore, they require specific norms of protection. Thus, the application in this specific case to Article 26 is not appropriate, inasmuch as, as will be explained, the Court cannot declare the autonomous violation of the right to work on the basis of that norm, because it does not have jurisdiction to do so. II. LACK OF JURISDICTION OF THE COURT TO DECLARE THE AUTONOMOUS VIOLATION OF THE RIGHT TO WORK ON THE BASIS OF ARTICLE 26 OF THE CONVENTION As I expressed in my opinions in Guevara Díaz v. Costa Rica, Mina Cuero v. Ecuador and Valencia Campos v. Bolivia, I repeat my position regarding the Court’s lack of jurisdiction in the area of economic, social, cultural and environmental rights. I will divide my explanation into three parts, inspired by the always rigorous analysis of Judge Eduardo Vio Grossi, whose recent passing leaves a valuable legacy in interAmerican legal reasoning. In the first place, I will refer to the scope of the content of the Convention (which definitively fixes the jurisdiction of the Convention), then to an analysis of the content of the Protocol of San Salvador and, finally, to the interpretation that should be given to both instruments. II.1 Content of the Convention As is well-known, the law of treaties refers to the obligations that emanate from the Cf. Para. 200. Cf. Para. 138. 7 Cf. Case of Moya Solís v. Peru and Case of Mina Cuero v. Ecuador. 8 Cf. Para. 118. 9 It should be remembered that the Court did not consider it necessary to declare the infringement of work stability as as a component of the right to work in Canales Huapaya et al. v. Peru nor in Aguado Alfaro et al. v. Peru, cases that share the same underlying facts with this case. 5 6 2