4
12.
Following the same line of thought, I wish to make two brief additional points in
connection with the American Convention on Human Rights. In the first place, the control of
conventionality lies, in my opinion and as already explained, with both domestic and
international judges (i.e. the members of the Inter-American Court). It is for this reason that I
have always found myself at odds, to some extent, with the pure renvoi of some issue pending
before the Court to the domestic organs for resolution, as I consider that, whenever possible,
the Court itself should provide such resolution. Second, the general obligation embodied in
Article 2 of the American Convention on Human Rights opens the door to its
“constitutionalization,” i.e. the “constitutionalization” of an international convention (which is
entirely different from the so-called internationalization of constitutional law and much more
advanced than it).
III.
Conventional Obligations of Protection as Obligations of Result.
13.
In my Separate Opinion to the Judgment rendered by this Court in the Case of
Baldeón-García v. Peru (Merits and Reparations, of Apr. 6, 2006), I dissented from the line of
reasoning taken by the majority of the Court, according to which state obligations to prevent,
investigate and punish perpetrators would be nothing but "best efforts” obligations, “rather
than [obligations] to ensure results." Unlike the majority of the Court, in that Separate Opinion
I stated that:
“In my opinion, the right to fair trial is also part of the realm of the international
jus cogens. As I explained in my Separate Opinion on the recent Case of Pueblo Bello
Massacre v. Colombia (2006),
‘The impossibility to segregate Article 25 from Article 8, both of the American
Convention (supra) involves the need to consider the right to fair trial, understood as full
access to justice, as part of the realm of the jus cogens, i.e. the intangibility of all legal
safeguards belong to the realm of the jus cogens as set forth in Articles 25 and 8,
considered as a whole. (...)
(...) the Court could -and should- have made qualitative progress on precedent
setting. I dare nurse the hope that the Court will do so as soon as possible if it effectively
continues supporting its avant-garde precedents, -instead of attempting to limit themand will courageously further on the progress made based on the aforementioned
Advisory Opinion n. 18 aimed at continuously broadening the material scope of the jus
cogens’ (para. 64-65).
Also in my recent Separate Opinion (paras. 52-55) in the case of López-Álvarez
v. Honduras (2006), I restated my idea that the right to justice (the right to fair trial lato
sensu) is a compulsory element of the jus cogens. The Court could –and should- have
established so in the instant case; instead, it repeated prior obiter dicta. Thus, the Court
lost the opportunity to step forward regarding its precedent setting process.
I will go even further. In my opinion, as I explained above, we are referring to
compulsory laws; therefore, the State's obligations to prevent, investigate and punish
perpetrators are not mere obligations "to act in a given manner, but not to achieve a
given result," as stated by the Court in paragraph 93 of this Judgment. I dissent in this
reasoning from the majority of the Court.
As I indicated in my Separate Opinion (para. 23) in the recent Judgment of the
Court of March 29, 2006, in the city of Brasilia, in the Case of Sawhoyamaxa Indigenous
Community v. Paraguay:
‘(...) The State’s obligations require it to act diligently and to achieve a given
result, not merely to act in a given manner (such as adopting insufficient and ineffective
legislative measures). Indeed, the examination of the difference between obligations to
act in a given manner and to achieve a given result8 has, in general, been carried out
8
.
Especially based on the work of the United Nations Commission on the International
Responsibility of States.