3 b) preexistent to the facts on which it is to pass judgment, an ex ante characteristic which often constitutes a precious guarantee of legal certainty: it is set in the axis of criminal repression itself, regarding the principle of nullum crimen nulla poena sine lege praevia: substantive, organic and procedural, and it excludes ad hoc courts and the trials by commission; c) independent, that is, autonomous in every aspect of its jurisdictional performance, with the powers to decide without the influence of other bodies of the State –or any external instance-, the actions brought before it, autonomy which must exist not only in the provision governing formal judicial performance (Constitution and secondary law), but also the reality in which the settler acts; d) impartial, that is, alien to the interest and the right of those who appear before him, free from “prejudice,” fit to constitute –formally and materially- that “third subject, set above the parties,” and therefore summoned to decide with total objectivity; and e) competent, that is, vested (by the preexistent law which institutes him) with the capacity to solve (in an independent and unbiased manner) the actions brought before him according to the system which distributes among the jurisdictional bodies the power of jurisdiction and decision corresponding to the State and that the latter exercises through the jurisdictional function. 10. Knowing that the court must internally have said capacity characteristics, it is necessary to move forward on external information – already implied in the capacity features– of its performance. It is in that aspect that we find the connections between jurisdiction and equality between the parties. Finally, it is attempted to project another radical principle of the democratic system over the exercise of the judicial function: that equality between the parties which claims for the same trial pattern, without detriment to the singularities derived from the action’s subject matter and from the inclusion of equaling elements when the controversy is between individuals with a natural “inequality of arms,” as I have expressed in precedent Opinions, in those cases where the actual inequality fights against formal equality. 11. After a long phase of material and procedural privileges, the equality which disregards special jurisdictions and trials made its way: the State jurisdiction is exercised with utmost objectivity, identical for any individuals, without any considerations but the weight of the reason with which the claims are sustained. In this long jurisdictional unity process –without this preventing, as I have already said, the existence of special material jurisdictions by virtue of the nature of the substantive relations- some special jurisdictional systems have remained, to a greater or smaller extent. The so called military, war or martial jurisdiction appears among them. 12. At present, there is a stronger tendency to the reduction and even the disappearance of the military trials. Several reasons related to the characteristics of the natural settler and to the principle of equality between the parties explain so, reasons to which I have already made reference. Those who support the pertinence of this jurisdiction, and at the same time the need to observe the principle of equality between the parties to its greatest extent –and before its typical instruments: mainly, the jurisdictional instruments – state that the military jurisdiction may and must be applied –preferably during war times- in the scope of two determining and