18 possibilities: either absolving the official and filing the corresponding accusation, or transferring the case to the courts to evaluate whether a crime has been committed. The rules of procedure do not go into sufficient detail about an eventual punishment to be applied directly by Congress, and this is established in article 100 of the Constitution. The impeachment proceeding against the three justices of the Constitutional Court was initiated irregularly for two reasons. First, the proceeding arose from a complaint by one of the justices of the Court with regard to incidents that had occurred within the Court. However, “the proceeding changed direction and the complainant end[ed] up as the defendant.” Second, the articles of impeachment did not refer to the judgment delivered by the Court that declared that the reelection law was non-applicable, but to the decision clarifying this judgment, because it was alleged that three justices could not assume to represent the full Court and, therefore, could not deliver a decision, which, in any case, was accessory, since the clarification requested by the Lima Bar Association was not in order, “because there was nothing to clarify.” He emphasized that the procedures established in the Constitutional Court’s statute form part of and complement the provisions of the Civil Procedural Code. In any case, the clarification decision delivered by some of the members of the Constitutional Court did not violate provisions of Peru’s constitutional legislation, since the decision declaring that the re-election law was non-applicable was signed by only three justices, so that if the content required clarification, the only persons who could be called on to clarify it were the justices who signed it. However, this is merely logical reasoning, since this presumption is not established in Peruvian legislation, although it exists in other legislations, such as that of Germany. Furthermore, it was not taken into consideration that Constitutional Court justices enjoy the same prerogatives as members of Congress and cannot be held responsible before any authority or court for the opinions that they emit in the exercise of their functions. During the dismissal procedure, several constitutional provisions were violated. The first relates to the failure of Congress to substantiate its decision ordering the dismissal of the three justices, since, by taking this decision, Congress exercised a function of a jurisdictional nature and, thus, in accordance with article 139(5) of the Constitution, the decision should have been substantiated. Even supposing the accusations had been integrated into its decision, Congress should have analyzed the accusations, as part of the substantiation. The reasons for the alleged constitutional violation were not even set out in the articles of impeachment and therefore there were irregularities in the substantiation of the decision. First, articles 99 and 100 of the Constitution stipulate that a person may only be dismissed for two reasons: due to a crime or a violation of the Constitution. In this case, the articles of impeachment expressly established that it was a constitutional violation and not a crime. Accordingly, the reason for the impeachment was that three justices of the Constitutional Court usurped certain functions by allegedly assuming to represent the full Court; however, although this could be a criminal act, it is not a constitutional violation. Consequently, there was no cause for the dismissal procedure, since no crime had been committed and there had been no constitutional violation, or at least the articles of impeachment never indicated in what it consisted.