5 11. One may, thus, seriously question whether the optional clause keeps on serving the same purpose which inspired it at the epoch of the PCIJ 17. The rate of its acceptance in the era of the ICJ is proportionally inferior to that of the epoch of its predecessor, the PCIJ. Furthermore, throughout the years, the possibility opened by the optional clause of acceptance of the jurisdiction of the international tribunal became, in fact, object of excesses on the part of some States, which only accepted the compulsory jurisdiction of the ICJ in their own terms, with all kinds of limitations18. Thus, it is not at all surprising that, already by the mid-fifties, one began to speak openly of a decline of the optional clause 19. 12. Those excesses occurred precisely because, in elaborating the Statute of the new ICJ, one failed to follow the evolution of the international community. One abandoned the very basis of the compulsory jurisdiction of the ICJ to a voluntarist conception of international law, which prevailed at the beginning of the last century, but subsequently disauthorized by its harmful consequences to the conduction of international relations, - such as vehemently warned by the more authoritative contemporary international juridical doctrine. There can be no doubt whatsoever that the distorted and incongruous practice, developed under Article 36(2) of the Statute of the ICJ, definitively does not serve as an example or model to be followed by the States Parties to treaties of protection of the rights of the human being such as the American Convention on Human Rights, in relation to the extent of the jurisdictional basis of the work of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. III. The International Compulsory Jurisdiction: Reflections Lex Lata. 13. Contemporary international law has gradually evolved, putting limits to the manifestations of a State voluntarism which revealed itself as belonging to another era 20. The methodology of interpretation of human rights treaties 21, developed as from 17 . Cf. statistic data in G. Weissberg, op. cit. supra n. (16), pp. 160-161; however, one ought to recall the clauses compromissoires pertaining to the contentious jurisdiction of the ICJ, which, in the mid-seventies, appeared in about 180 treaties and conventions (more than two thirds of which of a bilateral character, and concerning more than 50 States - ibid., p. 164). 18 . Some of them gave the impression that they thus accepted that aforementioned optional clause in order to sue other States before the ICJ, trying, however, to avoid themselves to be sued by other States; J. Soubeyrol, "Validité dans le temps de la déclaration d'acceptation de la juridiction obligatoire", 5 Annuaire français de Droit international (1959) pp. 232-257, esp. p. 233. 19 . C.H.M. Waldock, "Decline of the Optional Clause", 32 British Year Book of International Law (19551956) pp. 244-287. And, on the origins of this decline, cf. the Dissenting Opinion of Judge Guerrero in the Norwegian Loans case (Judgment of 06.07.1957), ICJ Reports (1957) pp. 69-70. 20 . When this outlook still prevailed to some extent, in a classic book published in 1934, Georges Scelle, questioning it, pointed out that the self-attribution of discrecionary competence to the rulers, and the exercise of functions according to the criteria of the power-holders themselves, were characteristics of a not much evolved, imperfect, and still almost anarchical international society; G. Scelle, Précis de droit des gens Principes et systématique, part II, Paris, Rec. Sirey, 1934 (reed. 1984), pp. 547-548. And cf., earlier on, to the same effect, L. Duguit, L'État, le Droit objectif et la loi positive, vol. I, Paris, A. Fontemoing Ed., 1901, pp. 122-131 and 614. 21 . As can be inferred from the vast international case-law in this respect, analysed in detail in: A.A. Cançado Trindade, El Derecho Internacional de los Derechos Humanos en el Siglo XXI, Santiago/México/Buenos Aires/Barcelona, Editorial Jurídica de Chile, 2001, pp. 15-58.