arguments against the justiciability of ESCER that are based on the restrictive wording of Article 26 of the Convention and on reflections on the insufficiency of the mechanisms of the Protocol of San Salvador. The American community itself, at the state and civil society levels, has attempted to get past these legal obstacles to affirm the full applicability of ESCER. 92. This context of the participation of multiple actors—whether institutional (State) or not—amounts to the authentic open society to which Peter Häberle refers, with language that has been built over decades of collective argumentation. The work is not an exclusive or voluntary one of the judges of the Court, but the unfinished product of the American community. Without any bias, it can be stated that by this point, the Court’s case law has transcended its beginnings to become a shared Latin American heritage with regard to rights. 93. Pursuant to what I have established throughout this concurring opinion, the open society of the interpreters of the Convention has absorbed and built the direct justiciability of ESCER. Despite possible deficiencies in terms of the drafting of Article 26 of the Convention and moments of hesitation on the part of the states Parties to it, it has been conclusively demonstrated that these rights are not only human, but fundamental to the trans-constitutional project, which has been underway for decades. Therefore, its value as a guide must not be underestimated—and therefore undermined—in the sense of overcoming poverty and the profound material inequalities in Latin America. 94. It is my belief that, serving the peoples of the continent as a judge of this Court, I am not interpreting the text of the Convention solely and in isolation. I understand the practices and arguments discussed collectively. I am in dialogue with the amici curiae, with the states, with the committees, and with the organized civil society of each state Party. It is not for me, therefore, to use a solipsistic interpretive approach that ignores the history, the meanings, the struggles, and the selfunderstanding of the American peoples as to the meaning of the rights of the Convention that they joined. 95. Obviously, exercising deference to the hermeneutic understanding of the open society of the interpreters of the Convention does not mean encouraging, or even tolerating, hypotheses of abusive conventionalism or interpretive fragmentation, since recognizing cognitive openness does not change the fact that the Court will always remain the ultimate interpreter of the Convention. 96. Essentially, incorporating the reality and the opinions of those to whom the norms of the Convention apply as elements for interpreting and applying Article 26 of the Convention is a coherent contribution to the norms governing conventional law and the specific principles that apply to international human rights law. In this sense, the examples given of the contributions of states, individuals, civil society groups, and the Commission as permanent subjects of the open society of interpreters of the Convention demonstrate that the enforceability of ESCER before the Court is already rooted in continental legal reality. This solid contribution cannot disappear into thin air by the mere fact that the composition of the Court periodically undergoes changes typical of the dynamics of changing appointments. IV. Violation of the right to work and to participate in the government. 97. In the case at hand, there is a clear violation of the right to equal protection set forth in Article 24 of the Convention. No substantive rationale based on the public role that Mr. Guevara was to exercise was even invoked by Costa Rica to justify— rationally and adequately—the deprivation of this employment opportunity. Although the victim had a mental disability, his intellectual capacity for the job was sufficiently 18

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