of association (Article 26 of the American Convention in relation to Article 8 (a) of the Protocol of San Salvador) and consequently voted in favor of the fourth operative paragraph, I must reaffirm my position against the direct and autonomous justiciability of the rights to strike and to work and to social stability through Article 26 of the American Convention. 4. I consider that the rights to strike, to work and to social stability, for which there is no conventional clause granting jurisdiction to the Court, could have been protected through the theory of connection. Indeed, the violations of these rights could be analyzed in relation to the right to freedom of association recognized in Article 16 of the Convention and to freedom of association in Article 8 (a) of the Protocol of San Salvador. 21 In this way, it would be possible to respect the norms on which the jurisdiction of the Inter-American Court is based. In the past, this was an interpretative path that allowed the Court to respond to factual situations such as those of the present case, without engaging in logical or legal inconsistencies, or undermining the legitimacy of the Court’s decisions in relation to the will of the American States, as expressed in the Convention and in the Protocol of San Salvador. 5. In conclusion, I consider it essential to state that, although the position according to which the ESCER are autonomously and directly justiciable by virtue of Article 26 of the American Convention is consistently reiterated in inter-American case law, and has thus acquired a kind of legal force, its rationale still exhibits the contradictions that I have pointed out since the case of Lagos del Campo v. Peru. Humberto Antonio Sierra Porto Judge Pablo Saavedra Alessandri Registrar 21 According to Article 19 of the Protocol of San Salvador, the violation of Article 8 (a) may be the basis for the individual petition mechanism before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the Court. “Article 19. Means of Protection […] 6. Any instance in which the rights established in paragraph a) of Article 8 and in Article 13 are violated by action directly attributable to a State Party to this Protocol may give rise, through participation of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and, when applicable, of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, to application of the system of individual petitions governed by Articles 44 through 51 and 61 through 69 of the American Convention on Human Rights.” 3