reference for the matter that is now analyzed. 34. The Court receives in public hearing, whenever necessary, the evidence provided by the parties to clarify a controversy and listens to the same directly. This is not the only way to know of the aspects of the case and gather elements for its adjudication. An important part of the jurisdictional proceedings is carried out in writing. Only the second part is developed with immediacy, publicity, and orally, always without detriment of the tribunal’s possibility to receive written petitions, evidentiary elements, and arguments. 35. Throughout the previous years, the tribunal has considerably increased the number of matters tended to and solved, and of hearings during its regular sessions. To these they have added those held in extraordinary sessions, outside the Court’s headquarters, system that became rooted in those same years. Besides, the tribunal has established a new practice consisting in special hearings to know of the progress in the compliance of judgments. 36. In synthesis, the holding of hearings characterizes the Court’s performance, even though it is not the only means used for compliance of its tasks. The option among the different procedural forms –in what refers to the written or oral substantiation—derives from the stipulations of the rules of procedures, of the general need to deal with and the conditions of each matter subject to examination. A double and ineludible rule is observed: need and appropriateness. On the contrary, it would be incurring in one of the two undesirable extremes: suppression or decrease of the hearings, on one hand, or an unnecessary multiplication of the same, on the other. It is important to mention that the majority –almost the totality—of the stages in which the Court hears of the merits of the controversy and of the possible reparations include the holding of hearings. The same does not occur with the stage for the interpretation of the judgment. Less than five hearings have been held in the last eighteen years, period during which the tribunal considered more than twenty-five requests. It was not necessary to hold them because the court had the necessary elements –as in the present case- to rule on the interpretation of the corresponding judgments. 38. The public hearing gives the parties the possibility to offer the tribunal elements that will help them form an opinion for the effects of the decision it will adopt, when necessary. The idea is to make access to justice easier, allowing a public exposure of the damages caused and of the evidentiary and argumentative response of the counterparty. Of course, there is a great difference between an academic deliberation, which is a debate among all the participants, and a legal hearing, in which the debate occurs only between the parties, who hold a dialogue in order to convince the tribunal. In this hypothesis, the tribunal deliberately places itself outside of the debate and it conserves, with regard to the merits and the form –both important--, the attitude of impartiality that characterizes its performance and concurs to establish its consideration and respectability, without becoming a main character in the controversy. It would be completely inadequate for the tribunal or its members to debate with the parties at a hearing. 39. In this case there was a public hearing at an extraordinary session held in the city of Guatemala. There the Court heard what the parties wished to contribute and argue before the full Court. The contentious matter was presented with freedom and sufficiency in the conditions of maximum publicity and visibility that normally characterize extraordinary sessions. It is possible for differences to arise between the parties regarding how to express their corresponding positions, and even regarding the 7