SEPARATE OPINION OF JUDGE A. A. CANÇADO TRINDADE 1. I have voted in favour of the present Judgment on the merits in the case of Blake versus Guatemala which the Inter-American Court of Human Rights has just rendered, for considering it to be in keeping with the applicable law, and bearing in mind what was previously decided by the Court in the Judgment on preliminary objections (of 02 July 1996). I feel, however, obliged to express, in this Separate Opinion, the thoughts which follow, concerning the limitation ratione temporis, raised in the cas d'espèce, as to the competence of the Court, and its legal consequences and impact on the handling of the crime of forced disappearance of person as reflected in the present Judgment. Already in my Separate Opinion in the previous Judgment on preliminary objections in the same Blake case I have expressed my concerns in that respect, which I now retake and develop in relation to the merits of the case. 2. As a judicial sentence (sententia, etymologically derived from "feeling" [sentimiento]) is something more than a logical operation set in defined legal parameters, I consider it my duty to explain the reason for my concerns as regards the legal solution set forth in the present Judgment of the Court. Such Judgment, despite the considerable efforts required of the Court by the circumstances of the case, while in conformity with the law stricto sensu, in my understanding fails to provide the unity proper to any legal solution and to meet fully the imperative of the realization of justice under the American Convention on Human Rights. As I shall indicate further on, only through the transformation of the existing law can justice be fully rendered in circumstances such as those presented in the instant Blake case of forced disappearance of person. I. The Limit of the Limitation Ratione Temporis. 3. The limitation ratione temporis to the competence of the Court, as I pointed out in my Separate Opinion (paragraph 8) in the earlier Judgment on preliminary objections in the present Blake case, has never had the wide scope (originally claimed by the respondent State) of conditioning ratione temporis the actual submission of the whole case to the jurisdiction of the Court, but specifically that of excluding from the consideration of the Court only the facts occurred before the acceptance by Guatemala of the jurisdiction of the Court in contentious matters. Even so, I allowed myself to add, in my aforementioned Separate Opinion (paragraphs 12-14), that the emphasis of the reasoning of the Court, in my view, "should be placed, not on the sword of Damocles of 09 March 1987, the date on which Guatemala accepted the jurisdiction of the Court (which is to be accepted as a limitation ratione temporis to the competence of this latter (...)), but rather on the nature of the alleged multiple and interrelated violations of protected human rights, and prolonged in time, with which the present case of disappearance is concerned. When, in relation to Article 62(2) of the American Convention on Human Rights, one is led, by the application of the rigid postulates of the law of treaties, to a situation like the present one, in which the questions of the investigation of the detention and death of a person, and of the punishment of the perpetrators, end up by being turned back to the domestic jurisdiction, grave questions subsist in the air, disclosing a serious challenge for the future. (...) (...) The great challenge which appears in the horizon consists (...) in keeping on advancing resolutely towards the gradual humanization of the law of treaties (a process already initiated