3
requirement of admissibility, reason for which it is not clear why the Inter-American
Court has turned it into a “means of defense” for the State, which the latter can
waive. It is understood that it is the State’s duty to indicate if there are domestic
remedies to be exhausted, but this does not mean that if it did not do so at a specific
moment, the Court or the Commission can abstain from examining the admissibility
requirements.
9.
Second, the rule invoked has been created by the jurisprudence of the Court
and it is not enshrined in the American Convention or in any other treaty that is
binding for the States. In this sense, as made clear in a recent dissenting opinion,6
“if the objective was to create a preclusive opportunity for the arguing of this
objection, it should have been established explicitly in the text of the American
Convention.” Likewise, it is not enough to file against the States the rules adopted by
the Commission and Court in their Rules of Procedure, since the latter do not
constitute treaties to which the States have consented.
10.
The aforementioned responds to general principles of legal certainty. In
effect, the States have had to face the application of a standard that seems to
contradict what has been established in the convention. The jurisprudential rule does
not seem to have been created based on the principle of consent of the States
Parties to the Convention, which may generate difficulties for a consensus regarding
the legitimacy of the decisions adopted by the Tribunal in what corresponds
specifically to this preliminary objection. Rules that the States were not aware of
upon ratifying the corresponding treaty are being applied to them.
11.
In fact, the jurisprudence of the Court in this matter seems to have
developed, on occasions, criteria not necessarily compatible among each other or
even modified in different ways, as occurs since the case of Perozo et al. v.
Venezuela, when instead of referring to the tacit waiver it indicates that the State did
not file the preliminary objection in a timely manner. This standard weakens even
more the requirements of legal certainty regarding the procedural behavior States
must follow in the litigation before the Court, since the change or variation made in
the Judgment regarding the tacit waiver, which is now substituted with “loss of the
possibility”, in my opinion is not a manner of mere semantics, but a variation that
would generate much more confusion, since it seems to be associated to the idea of
preclusion, which is not enshrined in the Convention either.
12.
Likewise, it is important to point out the frequency or recurrence with which
these matters are presented by the States before the Court, which –regardless of the
Commission’s opinion and the Court’s jurisprudence of more than 20 years- is a sign
of the importance of solving this matter in a definitive matter accepting the
possibility of debating the preliminary objections of this nature before the Tribunal.
13.
Finally, I consider that the fact that the Court is the only jurisdictional body of
the Inter-American System implies that it must maintain complete jurisdiction to
revise and decide matters of admissibility. As has been established by the Tribunal’s
jurisprudence, the latter “does not act, with regard to the Commission in a procedure
6
Dissenting opinions issued by the judge ad hoc Pier Paolo Pasceri Scaramuzza with regard to two
judgments of the Inter-American Court: I/A Court H.R. Case of Ríos et al. v. Venezuela. Preliminary
Objections, Merits, Reparations, and Costs. Judgment of January 28, 2009. Series C No. 194 and I/A Court
H.R. Case of Perozo et al. v. Venezuela. Preliminary Objections, Merits, Reparations, and Costs. Judgment
of January 28, 2009. Series C No. 195.
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