7
right to international justice, to the automatically compulsory
jurisdiction of the Inter-American Court, to the jurisdictionalization of
the Inter-American system of protection and to the retention, within
the scope of the latter and at present, of the role of district attorney
by the Inter-American Convention” (para. 3).
III.
The Right Of Access To Justice Lato Sensu In The Inevitable
Dissociability Between Articles 25 And 8 Of The American
Convention
19.
Next, I will refer to one of the central issues analyzed by the Court in this
Judgment in the case of Ximenes-Lopes (and treated in its jurisprudence constante,
and in several Opinions that I have rendered in adversarial cases submitted before
this Court), that is, the access to justice lato sensu, based on the inevitable
dissociability - which I have supported for years in this Court - between Articles 25
and 8 of the American Convention. With regard to that issue, in my recent and long
Separate Opinion in the case of Massacre of Pueblo Bello v. Colombia (Judgment of
January 31, 2006) I referred, in a logic sequence, to the broad scope of the general
duty of guarantee (Article 1(1) of the American Convention) and to the erga omnes
protection duty (paras. 2-13), to the genesis, ontology and hermeneutics of Articles
25 and 8 of the American Convention (paras. 14-21), to the irrelevance of allegation
of domestic law difficulties (paras. 22-23), to the right to an effective remedy in the
jurisprudential construction of the Inter-American Court (paras. 24-27); then I
examined the inevitable dissociability between access to justice (right to an effective
remedy) and the guarantees of due legal process (Articles 25 and 8 of the American
Convention) (paras. 28-34), and came to the conclusion that such impossibility of
dissociation, consecrated in the Court’s jurisprudence constante to date (paras. 3543), constitutes “a legal heritage of the Inter-American system of protection and of
the people of our region," reason for which “I firmly oppose to any attempt to
deconstruct it" (para. 33).
20.
In the same Separate Opinion in the case of Massacre de Pueblo Bello, I
supported the above mentioned impossibility of dissociation between Articles 25 and
8 of the American Convention as an “intangible jurisprudential advance” (paras. 4452).179 Then I referred to the right of access to justice lato sensu, remarking that:
"In the Reports I presented, in my then capacity as President of
the Inter-American Court, to the competent bodies of the American
States Association (ASO), e.g., on April 19, 2002 and on October 16,
2002, I defended my understanding in the sense of the broad scope of
the right of access to justice at international level, the right of access
to justice lato sensu.180 Such a right not only boils down to the formal
.
In the same Concurring Opinion, I also referred to the overcoming of difficulties regarding to the
right to an effective remedy in the jurisprudential construction of the European Court of Human Rights
(paras. 53-59).
179
.
Cf. also A.A. Cançado Trindade, "El Derecho de Acceso a la Justicia Internacional y las
Condiciones para Su Realización en el Sistema Interamericano de Protección de los Derechos Humanos",
37 Revista del Instituto Interamericano de Derechos Humanos (2003) pp. 53-83; A.A. Cançado Trindade,
"Hacia la Consolidación de la Capacidad Jurídica Internacional de los Peticionarios en el Sistema
Interamericano de Protección de los Derechos Humanos", 37 Revista del Instituto Interamericano de
Derechos Humanos (2003) pp. 13-52.
180