violation of Article 8(1) of the American Convention, for infringing the right to a hearing and the guarantee of a competent tribunal to the detriment of the 27 victims, “because they were dismissed from office by an incompetent body that did not grant them an opportunity to be heard”; 74 and Article 8(1) in conjunction with Article 23(1)(c) “given the arbitrary effects on the tenure in office of the judiciary and the consequent effects on judicial independence,” 75 it should also have elaborated on the violation of Article 8 from the perspective of the safeguards that the Inter-American System affords to the democratic State governed by the rule of law and, in particular, to the independence of judges who operate it and who make it resistant to the attacks of the political powers. 63. Likewise, the Judgment should have included a more exhaustive jurisprudential analysis of the Inter-American Democratic Charter itself, specifically in relation to Article 3. The Inter-American Court’s contentious role consists of settling disputes submitted to it by the Inter-American Commission and the parties in a particular case; clearly, it also has the mission to act as guarantor of the principles that comprise the Inter-American System of Human Rights. This mission is accomplished by providing guidance through the interpretation of the meaning of those principles, in order to clarify them. Therefore, ruling on a dispute between the parties and the scope of the law is one of the tasks of the InterAmerican jurisdiction, but it is not the only one: the Court also has an interpretive role as regards the American Convention, one that increases in importance given the very limited number of cases it hears. 64. Based on the proven facts it is clear that a multi-frontal attack was made on judicial independence as protected under the American Convention and reinforced by the InterAmerican Democratic Charter, specifically in relation to the institutional facet of the independence of the judges of Ecuador’s Supreme Court of Justice. Thus, the institutional independence of the Supreme Court of Justice, in its role as guarantor of its own domestic democratic system, was based on Ecuador’s constitutional and legal framework in force at the time when the judges dismissed by the National Congress were originally designated. In this regard, the Court should have linked these aspects more firmly with the Inter-American jurisprudence on judicial independence, already mentioned in this opinion, and should have emphatically condemned the flagrant abuse of political power that occurred in this case against the Supreme Court of Justice and its independence. 65. Indeed, since the Constitution of the Republic of Ecuador of August 11, 1998, contained provisions guaranteeing judicial independence, because it recognized the principle of the separation of powers and the independence of the judiciary in Article 199. 76 Similarly, it established that in public law the branches of government can only exercise the powers 74 Ibid. para. 180. 75 Idem. 76 Art. 199. - The agencies of the judicial branch shall enjoy independence in the exercise of their duties and powers. No function of the State may interfere in matters of their competence. Judges shall be independent in the exercise of their jurisdictional powers, even in relation to the rest of the judicial organs; they shall be subject only to the Constitution and to the law. Cf. Constitution of the Republic of Ecuador of August 11, 1998. 15