7 the classic postulates of the law of treaties, which have not accompanied either the normative evolution of international human rights law, or the emergence of fundamental values shared by the international community as a whole – has unfortunately led, once more, to the undue fragmentation of the complex, grave and continuing crime of the alleged forced disappearance of persons of the children, Ernestina and Erlinda Serrano Cruz. 27. It is not my intention to repeat in this dissenting opinion my extended arguments against this fragmentation, expressed in detail in my three separate opinions in the Court’s judgments in Blake v. Guatemala (preliminary objections, 1996; merits, 1998; and reparations, 1999). However, what I do find unacceptable is the broad scope of the State limitation referred to in the second operative paragraph of this judgment on preliminary objections in the Serrano Cruz Sisters v. El Salvador. In this regard, as I mentioned in my abovementioned concurring opinion in the Hilaire case (and also in the Benjamin and Constantine cases), with regard to Trinidad and Tobago: "In my understanding, in this matter, it cannot be sustained that what is not prohibited is permitted. This posture would amount to the traditional – and surpassed – attitude of laisser-faire, laisser-passer, proper to an international legal order fragmented by the voluntarist State subjectivism, which in the history of law ha ineluctably favored the most powerful ones. Ubi societas, ibi jus... At this beginning of the twenty-first century, in an international legal order wherein one seeks to affirm superior common values, among considerations of international ordre public, as in the domain of international human right law, it is precisely the opposite logic which should apply: what is not permitted, is prohibited. (...) It is not the function of the jurist simply to take note of the practice of States, but rather to say what the law is. Since the classic work of H. Grotius in the seventeenth century, there has been a whole trend of international law thinking which conceives international law as a legal order endowed with an intrinsic value of its own (and thereby superior to a merely “voluntary” law), - as well recalled by H. Accioly 11 - as it derives its authority from certain principles of sound reason (est dictatum rectae rationis)" (paras. 24 and 26). 28. In its judgment on preliminary objections in the Hilaire case – and also in the Benjamin and Constantine cases (2001) - the Inter-American Court considered correctly that, if it accepted the restrictions imposed by States in the instruments recognizing its contentious jurisdiction in their terms, this would deprive it of its powers and render illusory the rights protected by the American Convention (para. 93, and cf. para. 88). This position taken by the State is clearly supported by the specific and very clear formulation of Article 62(2) of the American Convention. 29. As I indicated in my separate opinion in Blake v. Guatemala (Reparations, 1999), "(...) In contracting conventional obligations of protection, it is not reasonable, on the part of the State, to assume a discretion so unduly broad and conditioning of the extent itself of such obligations, which would militate against the integrity of the treaty. The principles and methods of interpretation of human rights treaties, developed in the case law of conventional organs of protection, can much assist and foster this necessary evolution. Thus, insofar as human rights treaties are concerned, one should always bear in mind the objective character of the obligation enshrined therein, the autonomous meaning (in relation to the domestic law of the States) of the terms of such treaties, the collective guarantee underlying them, the wide scope of the obligations of protection and the restrictive interpretation of permissible restrictions. These elements converge in sustaining the integrity of human rights treaties, in seeking the fulfillment of 11 . H. Accioly, Tratado de Derecho Internacional Público, tome I, Rio de Janeiro, Imprensa Nacional, 1945, p. 5.