4 times the term acquiescence is used. At other times, there is an allusions to the State’s “institutional responsibility.” In other cases, expressions such as the “acknowledgement of international responsibility,” are invoked. Consequently, it is necessary to advance towards greater conceptual precision, which may involve new developments in the procedures of the parties and of the inter-American Court itself. There is also a need to establish a new practice in this respect: the precise indication of the facts that the State admits to and the claims to which it acquiesces, in the context of the acknowledgement of international responsibility and its consequences. This would go beyond the mere acknowledgement of international or institutional responsibility - I will return to this point below – which does not always clarify the defendant’s intention and the scope that the latter attributes to it. 14. In my concurring opinion to the judgment of September 18, 2003, in Bulacio v. Argentina, I attempted to approach this matter, indicating that two procedural definitions may coincide in an acknowledgement of responsibility – I am not saying that they always or necessarily coincide, because this will depend on the intention of the act and the way in which it is stated – both with substantive consequences: confession and acquiescence. Acquiescence – according to Alcalá-Zamora – is “an act of regulation or waiver of rights”: a waiver of the right to defense (El allanamiento en el proceso penal, EJEA, Buenos Aires, 1962, pp. 129 and ff.). “Confession is limited to de facto affirmations and acquiescence to the juridical claim” (Proceso, autocomposición y autodefensa (Contribución al estudio de los fines del proceso), Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Instituto de Investigaciones Jurídicas, 3ª ed., México, 1991, p. 96). Consequently, it will be necessary to examine the nature of the act of acknowledgement formulated by the State, in the context of the international proceeding and of the acts of the parties that occur within this. 15. The authentic scope of the statements made by some of the parties is not always clearly established, particularly those statements that, made by the State, may define the course of the proceeding and the content of the final decision. Obviously, I am not referring only to the scope that an external interpreter attributes to them, but to the scope that the organs that issue the statements wish to impart to them, which thereby commits the procedural position and substantive obligations of the State and, likewise, the defense and the substantive rights of the individuals. This is why other procedural parties are reticent to accept the statements of the State at face value and request the Court to establish the nature and scope of such statements. If the statement is not plain to the Court and to all the parties, the Court must examine it in light of different information – precedents, circumstances, clarifications, organ that issues it, etc. – and establish its juridical scope and consequences. 16. The recognition of institutional responsibility – as has been stated in various cases, including the Maritza Urrutia case, decided on November 27, 2003, during the same session in which the Court delivered judgment in the Mack Chang case – may only signify the acknowledgement that there is a continuity in the State’s obligations, beyond the periodic changes in the public administration, or the acceptance that there were shortcomings in the exercise of a general function of protection or guarantee that the State has with regard to all persons subject to its jurisdiction. This does not necessarily mean acknowledgement of concrete and specific conducts – acts or omissions – of State agents that resulted in direct violations of rights and freedoms established in domestic law and in the international Convention, which would give rise both to a judgment by the Inter-American Court in relation to the State itself, and to individual prosecution and punishment by the domestic courts in