CONCURRING JUDGMENT OF JUDGE JACKMAN The present judgment, with which I wholly concur, is of particular importance for at least three reasons: its reaffirmation that the practice of corporal punishment by States Parties to the American Convention on Human Rights (“the Convention”) is in flagrant breach of that treaty; its insistence on the absolute necessity that States should respect their treaty obligations; and its rejection of the dismal device known as “savings clauses” which have the effect of permitting certain states in the Commonwealth Caribbean the luxury of simultaneously reprobating and approbating internationally illicit behaviours. Corporal punishment The Court’s judgment adequately details the extent to which international human rights jurisprudence has outlawed this cruel, inhuman, and degrading punishment, so that there is no need for me to dilate on it further. It is, however, worth noting that, quite apart from the international opprobrium which this practice has attracted, the Supreme Curt of a jurisdiction with great constitutional similarity to Trinidad and Tobago had no difficulty, in the Barbadian case of Hobbs et al v R, in finding that flogging with the cat-o´-nine-tails is, in the words of Chief Justice Sir Denys Williams, “…inhuman within the meaning of section 15(1) [of the Constitution of Barbados]” and “…degrading within the meaning of section 15(1)”. The section referred to by the learned Chief Justice reads as follows: 15. (1) No person shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading punishment of other treatment. The relevant Trinidad and Tobago constitutional provision states that: […The] Parliament may not… impose or authorize the imposition of cruel and unusual treatment or punishment […] Pacta sunt servanda But, will Trinidad and Tobago comply with the decision of the Court? To judge from its failure to participate in the hearing of this case, and given its previous contemptuous attitude in the Hilaire case, compliance is, to say the least, unlikely. This despite the State’s indisputable responsibility under international law to answer to the Inter-American human rights system for any violations of the Convention alleged to have taken place during the period from May 28 1991, the day on which the State ratified the Convention and recognised the compulsory jurisdiction of the Court, and May 26, 1999, the day on which its denunciation of the Convention took legal effect. The principle that states should abide in good faith by the terms of treaties into which they voluntarily enter (pacta sunt servanda) is the bedrock of international comity and international law. Article 26 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (“the Vienna Convention”) reads as follows: “Every treaty in force is binding upon the parties to it and must be performed by them in good faith”. (Emphasis added.) It ought to be obvious that good faith compliance is of even greater importance in the area of international human rights law, where what is at stake is not the impersonal interests of states but the protection of the fundamental rights