7
Preliminary Objections, Judgment of February 3, 1993. Series C, No. 14, para. 63). Hence,
admission of the brief on preliminary objections presented extemporaneously would violate
those principles.
27. As far as the above allegations are concerned, the Court considers those brought by
the Government regarding the filing of its preliminary objection to be unfounded, on the
ground that although the time limit established in Article 31(1) of the Rules of Procedure is
thirty days, whereas the deadline for answering the application is three months, the
difference is not one of reckoning as Peru maintains, for the simple reason that time limits
set in international and national proceedings are not based on the same criteria.
28. It is true that a distinction is drawn between judicial periods established in days and
those established in months or years in some national procedural rules and in the practice of
many domestic tribunals. The former are reckoned excluding non-working days and the
latter in calendar days.
However, this distinction cannot be applied to international
tribunals, there being no standard regulation for determining which days are non-working,
unless these are expressly stated in the rules of procedure of the international
organizations.
29. This situation is more evident in the case of this Court, which is a jurisdictional body
that does not function on a permanent basis and holds its sessions, without need of
authorization, on days that may be non-working by the rules established for national
tribunals and those of the host country of the Court itself. For this reason, the criteria used
in domestic legislation cannot be applied.
30. The Rules of Procedure of this Court make no provision similar to that established in
Article 77 of the Regulations of the Inter-American Commission, whereby all periods
indicated in days in those Regulations “shall be understood to be calculated as calendar
days.” Nonetheless, this provision must be regarded as implicit in the proceedings before
this Tribunal since, as stated above, the differentiation criterion invoked by Peru is
unacceptable, there being no point of reference -such as that established in domestic
procedural legislation- to determine which days are non-working. It is therefore not feasible
to use any reckoning other than natural days to establish periods in days, months or years.
31. Two examples corroborate this point: first, the provisions of Article 80(1)(b) of the
Rules of Procedure of the Court of Justice of the European Communities, amended on May
15, 1991, which provides that:
[a] period expressed in weeks, months or in years shall end with the expiry of whichever day in the
last week, month or year is the same day of the week, or falls on the date, as the day during which
the event or action from which the period is to be calculated occurred or took place. If, in a period
expressed in months or years, the day on which it should expire does not occur in the last month,
the period shall end with the expiry of the last day of that month.
Secondly, mention may be made of Articles 46 and 49 of the Rules of Procedure of the Court
of Justice of the Cartagena Agreement (Andean Agreement) of March 15, 1984. Whereas
the former clearly establishes the working days and hours of the Tribunal, as well as its
holidays, Article 49 establishes in its first paragraph that: “[t]he periods shall be reckoned
in continuous days and calculated excluding the day of the date on which it begins..” Let it
be said, however, that both the Tribunals cited function on a permanent basis.