5 itself of the Inter-American Court on the matter9. Thus, in the case of Loayza Tamayo versus Peru (Merits, 1997)10, the Court determined the incompatibility with the American Convention (Article 8(4)) of the decrees-laws which tipified the crimes of "traición a la patria" and of "terrorism" (pars. 66-77). Subsequently, in the case of Castillo Petruzzi versus Peru (Merits, 1999)11, the Court held that such decrees-laws violated Article 2 of the Convention, which requires not only the suppression of norms in breach of the guarantees enshrined therein, but also the adoption of norms in order to secure the observance of those guarantees (pars. 207-208); this being so, the Court ordered the respondent State to reform the norms of domestic law declared to be in violation of the American Convention (resolutory point n. 14). 12. In the case Garrido and Baigorria versus Argentina (Reparations, 1998)12, the Court dedicated a whole section of the Judgment (part IX) to the State's duty to take action in the ambit of domestic law, in which it recalled, inter alia, that "under the law of nations, a customary norm prescribes that a State that a State that has concluded and international agreement must introduce into its domestic law whatever changes are needed to ensure execution of the obligations it has undertaken" (par. 68). In sum, this is the duty of the State to take positive measures of effective protection (par. 69) of the human rights of all persons under its jurisdiction. 13. But the great qualitative step forward in the recent case-law of the Court, the true landmark on the question at issue, occurred in the case of Suárez Rosero versus Ecuador (Merits, 1997); in its Judgment, the Court, in declaring inter alia that a provision of the Ecuadorean Penal Code was in breach of Article 2 of the American Convention, in combination with Articles 7.5 and 1.1 of the latter (resolutory point n. 5), the Court pointed out not only that the impugned legal provision had been applied in the cas d'espèce, but also that, in its view, that provision of the Ecuadorean Penal Code violated per se Article 2 of the Convention, "whether or not it was enforced in the instant case" (par. 98)13. In this way, the Court endorsed, at last, the thesis of the international objective responsibility of the State, admitting that a norm of domestic law can, in the circumstances of a concrete case, by its own existence and applicability breach the American Convention on Human Rights. 14. If any dount were still to persist as to this point, i.e., that the very existence and applicability of a norm of domestic law (be it infraconstitutional or constitutional) can per se engage the responsibility of the State under a human rights treaty, the facts 9 . In my aforementioned Dissenting Opinion in the case of El Amparo (Interpretation of Sentence, 1997), I pondered that the Inter-American Court was, at that time (April 1997), "at a crossroads" in relation to the question dealt with herein: either it continued to insist, as to the national laws of the States Parties to the American Convention, on the occurrence of a damage resulting from its effective application as a precondition to determine the incompatibility or otherwise of such laws with the Convention (as it did in the cases of El Amparo and Genie Lacayo, supra), or else it would come to proceed to such determination (and of its juridical consequences in concrete cases) as from the very existence and applicability of the national laws, bearing in mind the duty of prevention incumbent upon the States Parties to the Convention (as I sustained in my Dissenting Opinions in the cases of El Amparo, Caballero Delgado and Santana, and Genie Lacayo, supra) (par. 12). 10 IACtHR, Judgment of 17.09.1997, Series C, n. 33. 11 IACtHR, Judgment of 30.05.1999, Series C, n. 52. 12 IACtHR, Judgment of 27.08.1998, Series C, n. 39. 13 Emphasis added. . . . .