CONCURRING OPINION OF JUDGE SERGIO GARCIA RAMIREZ IN THE JUDGMENT ON THE CASE OF FERMIN RAMIREZ V. GUATEMALA, OF JUNE 18, 2005 A) Of the due process and the criminal function 1. In this first part of my Concurring Vote I will present some considerations on the position of the Inter-American Court regarding the due process in general, a notion that has oriented the decisions of the Tribunal in the legal proceedings that concern the matters of the trial. In separate paragraphs, infra, I will refer to the characteristics that the matter of the due process assumes in the case sub judice. It certainly offers specific characteristics, in good measure different to the ones present in other trials that have come to be known by this Court with regard to issues of the due criminal process. 2. As a previous clarification, it is appropriate to mention that the concept of due process that I will proceed to examine is the one that refers to procedural matters, called “adjective” (that has a paradigmatic reference in the classic reflection of Lord Coke on the impertinence of somebody being the judge of their own cause). This version of the due process refers to the adequate serving through jurisdictional instances and others that are responsible for the decision of controversies pursuant to certain principles and formal rules. Another thing is the due process in its “substantive” meaning, developed by the jurisprudence and the doctrine of the United States of America and received in other countries (whose paradigmatic reference was reexamined by the justice Samuel Miller, of the Supreme Court of the United States of America, in Davidson v. New Orleans (1878): “to take away from A to give to B”). Obviously, the American Convention and the Inter-American Court have taken into account –although under different expressions—the matters covered in the substantive version of the due process, focused on the consistency of the norms and decisions with a specific group of values and interests. 3. That substantive notion must be analyzed in the light of several precepts of the Convention and of various jurisprudence of the Court. Among those we can find the stipulations regarding the interpretation of the Pact of San Jose, especially those that prohibit its interpretation in such a way that it may “preclude other rights or guarantees that are inherent in the human personality or derived from representative democracy as a form of government” (Art. 29 (c)), or “exclude or limit the effect that the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man and other international acts of the same nature may have” (Art. 29 (d)); those that refer to admissible restrictions that “can only be applied in accordance with laws enacted for reasons of general interest and in accordance with the purpose for which they have been established” (Art. 30); and those that refer to the limit of the right of each person: “the rights of others, (…) the security of all and (…) the just demands of the general welfare, in a democratic society.” (Art. 32(2)) 4. The jurisprudence of the Court includes important information of the examination of the “substantive” due process, even though it has not used this approach. Without the intention of going into detail of these matters –taking into consideration that, as previously mentioned, this Opinion refers only to the “adjective” due process, which is the version explored under the area of the due process--, the Inter-American jurisprudence has referred to the characteristics the law that