they fulfilled the requirements to benefit from the provisions of article 31, the Bank was not denying them any right; this happened exclusively when the Bank considered that, in the corresponding cases, this proof had not been provided. In summary, we can say, on the one hand, that the Bank’s decisions based on that article did not constitute a contentious proceeding and, on the other, that only in those cases where the interested parties considered that the Bank’s decision, adopted based on or bearing in mind the facts gathered by the above-mentioned Commission, was not sufficiently founded, particularly owing to the inadequacy of those facts, was it possible to appeal against it. Thus, it was only in the cases in which the Bank refused to grant the rights established in the said article, because it considered that the petitioner in question did not fulfill the article’s requirements, that a dispute could be constituted. On the same basis – that is to say, because the Bank’s procedure did not consist in settling a dispute – its procedure could not constitute a violation of Article 8(1), because what is at issue is not the exercise of the right of every individual to “a hearing, with due guarantees and within a reasonable time, by a competent, independent, and impartial judge or tribunal, previously established by law, for the determination of his rights and obligations of a civil, labor, fiscal, or any other nature,” or the exercise of that right before a “State body (which without being a judge or tribunal as such) adopts decisions on the determination of the rights of the individual” or before “any State body that (without being a judge or tribunal as such) exercises functions of a substantially jurisdictional nature,” bodies that have been granted the contentious jurisdiction and that, consequently, act as judges or tribunals. This thesis is supported by the fact, which was not examined in the judgment, that the provisions of article 31 did not exclude the right to resort to the competent courts against the Bank’s decisions. The terms of the article were not exclusive or prohibitive, which indicates that the mechanism established in the article did not substitute or complement the judicial or jurisdictional remedies, or prohibit them. Consequently, this mechanism had no effect whatsoever on the right of the interested parties to make use of the judicial remedies established by law to that end and, indeed, some of those affected by the said situation did so.28 Thus, I cannot share the presumption on which the judgment is based, that the provisions of article 31 were included to avoid interested parties having to resort to the courts29 and that, for this reason, the State “decided to create,” “instead” of the judicial organs, “a special procedure and delegate decisions to an administrative body,” to which it granted limited powers to decide a dispute;30 because, first, the objective of the article was really only to ensure compliance with the requirements it established to accede to the rights it indicated, so that, if this was done, it was unnecessary to resort to the courts of law; second, because there is no evidence, but rather the contrary, that it curtailed the powers of the ordinary courts regarding the right of those affected to appeal to them to safeguard their rights impaired by the situation that article 31 was intended to resolve, or against the Bank’s decisions under that article; third, because the powers established in the said article are of the same nature as those that naturally correspond to and are exercised by the Bank and, lastly, because, strictly speaking, there was still no dispute to decide, in other words, none of the interested parties had yet been denied the right established in article 31; but rather, to the contrary, what was involved was an administrative procedure precisely to recognize those rights and, furthermore, more easily and promptly.31 28 Para. 103 29 Para. 139. 30 Para. 140. 31 Para. 139. 8