7 are provisions related to the protection of human rights and, therefore, to the main and most essential issue of the Rule of Law. In this regard, it should further be noted that the State ratified the American Convention and accepted the contentious jurisdiction of the Court in 1991, i.e. many years after the enactment of the Corporal Punishment Act (1953) and the Constitution (1976). 27. In the instant case, the abovementioned clause entails an anticipated repeal of the Constitution, which will not apply to situations governed by preexisting laws, even though the major concerns safeguarding the individual —the citizen, for whose benefit the State is designed— are enshrined in the new supreme law and the old law persists in ideas that date back even further than the date of its enactment. The sense of a new progressive law is precisely to create a new plausible scenario. This is hampered by the savings clause, which has the past prevail into the future. It makes a superior purpose —the safeguarding of human rights— subservient to an inferior decision —the retention of a form of punishment excluded by the Constitution itself. 28. It is surprising how such clause may suspend the application of nothing less than the provisions that constitute the cornerstone of the modern Rule of Law, the very essence of the Constitution and the reason itself whereby political society stands, that is the fundamental rights of the individual, recognized by a current supreme provision but ignored —effectively ignored— by a secondary provision petrified in the past, yet still operative —running counter to the Constitution itself— at present intending to remain so forever, since it is effective sine die. III. REASONABLE TIME 29. Non-compliance with the “reasonable time” to close a proceeding and impose a sanction has been noted in the instant case, non-compliance that would undermine due process of law. This problem has been analyzed from the point of view of the proceeding itself, which ends with a court decision, as well as from the point of view of the execution of the punishment for which such final decision is an enforceable order. There has been no consideration by the Court of the procedural nature the execution may have, or in a different light, the applicability to it of the principles inherent in criminal due process. 30. It is evident that the disregard of the reasonable time remains a crucial problem for criminal justice, the reforms of which have been ineffective in sufficiently and definitely addressing the need for a brief, diligent and expeditious administration of justice. Now then, in the circumstances of the case sub judice it is apparent that the Inter-American Court could not deem that punishment by flogging, in itself unlawful, should have been administered without delay —in accordance with the provisions of domestic law— in order to conform to due process requirements. The punishment is flagrantly illegitimate, irrespective of the delay and the date chosen to impose and inflict it. The delay contra legem does not originate a violation; rather it exposes its existence and aggravates its consequences. IV. CONDITIONS OF ARREST 31. It is also notorious, in relation to the facts in the instant case, the persistence of a major problem in the field of criminal justice, constantly observed in a large number of cases submitted to the contentious jurisdiction of this Court and even analyzed in some consultative opinions. I am referring to the conditions of arrest existent in the vast majority of prisons —whether adult or juvenile institutions— which are entirely incompatible with the American Convention and with the so-called international “standards” on this matter, described in several