by the party, which was not demonstrated in at least eight of the thirteen cases. It therefore
believed that it was inappropriate to hold the State responsible for the applicants’ lack of activity
or procedural measures.
134. With respect to the alleged violation of Article 2 of the Convention for failing to have
regulatory measures that would guarantee access to justice, the State argued that labor
judgments in Chile are currently settled through a subsequent, differentiated procedure and
argued before a specialized tribunal called the Court for Labor and Pension Collections, created
on May 30, 2005, under Law No. 20,022. Likewise, regarding the argument that the primary
obstacle to enforcement of the judgments was that municipal assets were not eligible for
attachment, the State pointed out that the the country had no rules or regulations that could
absolutely shield municipal assets from being seized, and that in fact, several of the cases at
hand360 had succeeded in attaching assets that were not designated for the functions inherent to
the work of the municipalities.
135. Finally, the State argued that, because it could not be held responsible for the failure to
execute the judgments on which the case was based, it therefore could not be found to have
violated the right to property of the alleged victims; in fact, this right had been upheld by the
courts, but the judgments had not been carried out for lack of initiative by the parties. It
accordingly asked that the State be found not to have violated Article 21 of the Convention, read
in conjunction with the obligations provided in Articles 1(1) and 2 thereof.
B. Considerations of the Court
136. This dispute concerns the State’s alleged failure to enforce final, non-appealable judgments
in favor of teachers in the framework of the thirteen proceedings that comprise the case, and the
Court therefore finds it necessary to begin by determining who the beneficiaries of these final
verdicts are (1). Next, and for the purpose of elucidating the arguments brought by the parties
and the Commission, the Court will discuss the alleged violations of the right to judicial protection
by examining, first, the obligation of the party in the process to push for execution of judgment,
and second, the regulatory and material barriers for demanding debt payment from the
municipalities (2). It will then evaluate whether the lapse of over twenty-five years that have
passed since the processes of execution of judgment began, without achieving full payment of
the debts, is reasonable (3). It will proceed next to analyze the State’s duties to adapt domestic
legal provisions that will ensure the right to judicial guarantees and the right to a reasonable time
period (4). Finally, it will judge on the alleged violation of the right to property for the teachers
who were beneficiaries of the still unrealized judgments (5).
B.1. The teachers who received a favorable judgment
137. The Court will first address the matter of which individuals can be correctly held as alleged
victims of the violations claimed by the representatives and the Commission, given the failure to
enforce judgments delivered against the municipalities in the thirteen proceedings subsumed in
the instant case. The Court recalls the Commission’s assertion in the Merits Report that 848
teachers are alleged victims, as identified in the list attached to the report.
360
Alegría Cancino et al. v. the Municipality of Pelluhue, Docket No. 218-1993 and Ramírez Ortiz et al. v. the
Municipality of Vallenar, Docket No. 4,443-1993. The State also argued that several vehicles had been attached in
the judgments against the municipality of Parral.
48
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