2 expressed by Venezuela, asserted that there had "ceased the controversy as to the facts" which originated the present El Amparo case (paragraphs 19-21). 5. In its Judgment on Reparations in the El Amparo case, of 14 September 1996, the Court explained the juridical effect of the submission of acceptance (allanamiento) on the part of the respondent State: "Venezuela recognized its responsibility in this case, which means that it accepts as true the facts described in the petition of 14 January 1994, this being the meaning of the Judgment rendered by the Court on 18 January 1995" (paragraph 13). Those facts include the application, by the President of the Republic (Carlos Andrés Pérez), of Article 54(2) of the Code of Military Justice, by ordering that no investigation be initiated against Military Judge Major Ricardo Pérez Gutiérrez, who had served as judge of first instance in the case of the massacre in El Amparo (supra). 6. This, in my view, would suffice for the Court to reconsider the conclusion it reached in the determination of the facts in the present case. What most concerns me, as I warned in my Dissenting Opinion (El Amparo, Reparations, Judgment of 14 September 1996), is the failure to recognize that the very existence - and applicability - of a legal provision (invoked in a contentious case in which victims of human rights violations exist) may per se create a situation which affects directly the rights protected by the American Convention, to the extent that, for example, it may inhibit the exercise of the protected rights by failing to impose precise limits upon the discretionary power conferred on public authorities to interfere in the exercise of full judicial guarantees (Articles 25 and 8 of the Convention). Even if the aforementioned discretionary faculty of Article 54(2) and (3) had not been applied in the case, its sole applicability would, in my view, suffice for the Court to proceed to the determination of its incompatibility or otherwise with the American Convention. 7. The major direct consequence of the decision of the Court, in the present Resolution, to maintain its previous determination of the facts in the El Amparo case, lies, pursuant to the position it had already taken (Judgment on Reparations), in its alleged impossibility to proceed, in such circumstances, to the determination of the incompatibility or otherwise of provisions of a national military legislation with the American Convention on Human Rights. In accordance with its criterion, it could only do so after that law had effectively been applied in the concrete case. 8. That being so, I am also obliged to sustain my dissent over that selflimitation by the Court. Beyond the sole determination of the facts, may I, faithful to my position, retake and develop the arguments as to the law, expressed in my Dissenting Opinions in the cases El Amparo (Reparations, Judgment of 14 September 1996) and Caballero Delgado and Santana (concerning Colombia, Reparations, Judgment of 29 January 1997). Paraphrasing Ionesco1, je ne capitule pas... II. 1. The Legislative Obligations of States Parties. Eugène Ionesco, Le Rhinocéros, 1958.