4 I) Ratification of the role of the Court, throughout proceedings, in the subjective and objective protection of human rights the 14. In another place in the Judgment issued in the Case of García Prieto, the Inter-American Court freshly examines, in a brief and appropriate forms, the consequences of a friendly settlement among the State and one of the individuals that was a party in a prior stage of litigation, on her own behalf and on behalf of her minor son. When seen from the perspective of the individual, this issue concerns the composition of a renunciation of certain claims that the interested party deems satisfied by the State. 15. What is more interesting, without prejudice to the substantive findings of this particular case, is to note the function of the Inter-American Court and the way in which the Court is projected into a dispute that, under other conditions, would cease once the agreement between the (material) parties of the case was reached. The Tribunal has made it clear that: a) it is incumbent upon the Court to officiously protect –once the proceedings have been brought in an international suit- the human rights of the interested parties (subjective protection that is detached from the objective protection of the legal order); b) this protection concerns the case sub judice and its protagonists, but it does not concern any less (due to the nature and characteristics in which it is being exercised, in the framework of an “international System” for protection of human rights) the whole of the States committed to the System and the individuals of those States subject to its jurisdiction, and, consequently, bearers of an expectation of respect and guarantee of their treaty rights and liberties as interpreted by the Court; and c) the protection of these concepts may require that the trial continue, despite the agreement reached (and independently, up to a certain point, the acts of confession, settlement, and transaction related to it), which leads to a more or less complete trial process, and to a complete judgment on the controversy raised in the petition and, shall we say, a “pedagogical”, “preventative” exercise of the jurisdiction which operates despite the settlement. It is in these terms that the Court has operated in the proceedings brought in recent years, in cases in which a settlement among the parties was reached. This orientation remains firm in the present case, without prejudice to the specific characteristics that concur here and that are not necessary to examine at this time. Judge Sergio García Ramírez President Pablo Saavedra Alessandri Secretary