2 5. The provision of Article 63(2) in fine of the American Convention (cit. supra) pertains to the moment of the submission to the Court of the request for provisional measures: the Court "may act at the request of the Commission". At this moment of the Commission's request, the case ought to be pending before the Commission itself, so that it can lodge that request with the Court. But once set in motion the Court's jurisdiction, this latter becomes intangible: it is not - it cannot be - affected in any way by the subsequent conduct or action by the parties (in contentious matter), or of the requesting State or organ (in advisory matter), or of the Commission as the organ requesting provisional measures of protection. 6. Nothing in Article 63(2) of the American Convention authorizes to condition the consideration of the subject by the Court to the proceedings (trámite) of the same case before the Commission. An interpretation to the contrary would lead to the juridically unsustainable situation of conditioning the competence (power to continue considering a given matter) already established of the Court to determine and supervise provisional measures of protection to the subsequent conduct or action of the organ requesting such measures. Of that action one cannot extract juridical consequences to the detriment of the intangibility of the jurisdiction of the Court. 7. In sum, as from the moment that the matter is submitted to the consideration of the Court, it falls under its jurisdiction, and it remains thereunder, irrespectively of the course of proceedings of the case under the Commission. The fact that the proceedings before this latter reach the end, in no way affects the jurisdiction of the Court. As I have pointed out in my Concurring Opinion in the Advisory Opinion of the Court on the Reports of the InterAmerican Commission on Human Rights (OC-15, of 14.11.1997), the Court is, in any circumstances, master of its jurisdiction; the Court, as every organ endowed with jurisdictional competences, has the inherent power to determine the extent of its own competence (Kompetenz-Kompetenz / compétence de la compétence) (paragraphs 5 and 7), - either in advisory matter, or in contentious matter, or else in relation to provisional maesures of protection. 8. The Court cannot abdicate from this prerrogative, which moreover is a duty which the American Convention imposes upon it, to exercise its functions under Articles 62(3) and 64 of the Convention. Its jurisdiction cannot be at the mercy of facts other that its own actions. It is initially as guardian and master of its own jurisdiction (jurisdictio, jus dicere, the power to declare the Law) that on the Court, as the supreme organ of supervision of the American Convention, is conferred the role of establishing the juridical bases for the construction of an inter-American ordre public of observance and safeguard of human rights. 2. Substantive Level. 9. At this point, I move from the jurisdictional to the substantive level of the subject under examination. The fact that the State has requested the lifting of the order of the Court in relation to Mr. Anthony Briggs (in view of the end of the proceedings of the case before the Commission), and the fact that, until now, it has not executed any of the condemned persons, seems to disclose a recognition of the binding character of the provisional measures ordered by the Court. A basic feature, characteristic of such

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