4 her remaining life expectancy” and that this “amount, therefore, is incorporated into the estate of the deceased victim, but is delivered to the next of kin”; therefore, “the Court will determine the appropriate amounts that it deems pertinent to order” (Case of the La Rochela Massacre, para. 246). 9. Furthermore, I consider that the reasoning of the majority of the members of the Court is incorrect when it progresses from the premise that “when national mechanisms exist to determine forms of reparation” they “can be assessed,” to affirming that “it has been determined that […] the administrative courts […] established compensation for loss of potential earnings based on objective and reasonable criteria,” and finally to conclude that “the Court assesses positively the measures taken by the domestic courts in this case,7 and finds that the amount established by these courts is reasonable in terms of its case law.” Here there is a clear petitio principii, because precisely what should have been determined, using convincing arguments based on the evidence, was that the criteria used by the Colombian administrative system of justice had effectively been “objective and reasonable,” and that “the amount established by these courts” was “reasonable in terms of [the] case law” of the Court, so that it could be assessed “positively,” not only to recognize “the efforts made by Colombia” (as in the Case of the La Rochela Massacre, para. 245), but rather to consider them decisive and final. 10. The reasoning of the majority of the members of the Court has unduly inverted the correct reasoning set out in the Velásquez Rodríguez case (paras. 30 and 31) because, by accepting uncritically the decision of the domestic courts on “the formula used to calculate and distribute the compensation for loss of earnings,” it is, in fact, “condition[ing] the reparations established by the Court to the instruments of reparation that exist under the domestic laws of the State Party responsible for the violation” and allowing the calculation of the compensation for loss of earnings to be established “in function of the defects, imperfections or deficiencies of national law,” instead of establishing compensation “independently of it” and based “upon the American Convention and the applicable principles of international law.” Alberto Pérez Pérez Judge Pablo Saavedra Alessandri Secretary 7 [Footnote 334 in the text of the judgment] Cf. Case of the La Rochela Massacre, supra note 16, para. 245.