2 which "per se creates a legal situation that affects the protected human rights", is in fact "a concrete question" (pars. 7-8). 4. I then expressed, in that Opinion, my understanding in the sense that "it is the existence of victims that provides the decisive criterion for distinguishing the examination simply in abstracto of a legal provision, from the determination of the incompatibility of such provision with the American Convention (...) in the framework of a concrete case (...). The existence of victims renders juridically inconsequential the distinction between the law and its application, in the context of a concrete case" (pars. 7-8 and 11)2. In the same case of El Amparo (Interpretation of Judgment, 1997)3, in a subsequent Dissenting Opinion, I insisted on my understanding that that responsibility of the State is engaged as from the moment in which the State fails to comply with an international obligation irrespective of the occurrence of an additional damage (pars. 24-25, 21 and 26). The American Convention, together with other human rights treaties, "were conceived and adopted on the basis of the assumption that the domestic legal orders ought to be harmonized with the conventional provisions, and not vice-versa" (par. 13). Definitively, - I warned, - one "cannot legitimately expect that such conventional provisions be `adapted' or subordinated to the solutions of constitutional law or of internal public law, which vary from country to country (...). The American Convention, as well as other human rights treaties, seek, a contrario sensu, to have in the domestic law of the States Parties, the effect of improving it, in order to maximize the protection of the recognized rights, bringing about, to that end, whenever necessary, the revision or revocation of national laws (...) which do not conform to its standards of protection" (par. 14). 5. This being so, sustaining the thesis of the objective international responsibility of the States Parties as the one which provides the conceptual basis of the duty of prevention, I added that "A State, accordingly, may have its international responsibility engaged, in my view, by the simple approval and promulgation of a law in conflict with its conventional international obligations of protection, or by its failure to harmonize its domestic law in order to secure the faithful compliance with such obligations, or by its failure to adopt the legislation needed to comply with these latter. Time has come to give precision to the scope of the legislative obligations of States Parties to human rights treaties. The tempus commisi delicti is, in my understanding, that of the approval and promulgation of a law which, per se, by its existence itself, and its applicability, affects the protected human rights (in the context of a given concrete case, where victims of violations of the protected rights exist), without the need to wait for the subsequent application of that law, generating an additional damage. 2 . And I added: - "(...) In the exercise of the contentious jurisdiction the Court may determine, at the request of a party, the incompatibility or otherwise of a domestic law with the Convention in the circumstances of the concrete case. The American Convention effectively authorizes the Court, in the exercise of its contentious jurisdiction, to determine whether a law, impugned by the complainant party, and which by its own existence affects the protected rights, is or not contrary to the American Convention on Human Rights" (pars. 7-8 and 11). 3 . IACtHR, Resolution of 16.04.1997, Series C, n. 46.