13 international tribunals of human rights to date, in their converging case-law on the question, have refused to yield to undue manifestations of State voluntarism, have fully performed the functions attributed to them by them by the human rights treaties which created them, and have given a worthy contribution to the strengthening of the international jurisdiction and to the realization of the old ideal of international justice. 37. There is pressing need for the States to be convinced that the international legal order is, more than voluntary, necessary. In the ambit of general international law, in my understanding, the time has come to advance decidedly in the improvement of the judicial settlement of international disputes. In the last 80 years, the advances in this field could have been much greater if State practice would not have betrayed the purpose which inspired the creation of the mechanism of the optional clause of compulsory jurisdiction (of the PCIJ and the ICJ), that is, the submission of political interests to Law by means of the development in the realization of justice at international level. 38. The time has come to overcome definitively the regrettable lack of automatism of the international jurisdiction. With the distortions of their practice on the matter, the States face today a dilemma which should have been overcome a long time ago: either they return to the voluntarist conception of international law, abandoning for good the hope in the primacy of Law over political interests 41, or they retake and achieve with determination the ideal of construction of an international community with greater cohesion and institutionalization in the light of Law and in search of Justice, moving resolutely from jus dispositivum to jus cogens 42. 39. The time has come to consider, in particular, in a future Protocol of amendments to the procedural part of the American Convention on Human Rights, aiming at strengthening its mechanism of protection, the possibility of an amendment to Article 62 of the American Convention, in order to render such clause also mandatory, in conformity with its character of fundamental clause (cláusula pétrea), 41 . In fact, more advances have not been achieved in the judicial settlement of international disputes precisely because States have shown themselves reluctant with regard to it, paying more attention to political factors; Ch. de Visscher, Aspects récents du droit procédural de la Cour Internationale de Justice, Paris, Pédone, 1966, p. 204; and cf. also L. Delbez, Les principes généraux du contentieux international, Paris, LGDJ, 1962, pp. 68, 74 and 76-77. - More recently, a former President of the ICJ criticized as unsatisfactory the bad use made by the States of the mechanism of the optional clause (of the compulsory jurisdiction of the ICJ) of the Statute of the Court; in his words, the States may consider that "there is some political advantage in remaining outside a system which permits States to join more or less on their own terms at an opportune moment". R.Y. Jennings, "The International Court of Justice after Fifty Years", op. cit. supra n. (14), p. 495. Cf. also the criticisms of another former President of the ICJ: E. Jiménez de Aréchaga, "International Law in the Past Third of a Century", 159 Recueil des Cours de l'Académie de Droit International de La Haye (1978) pp. 154-155; and cf. also the criticisms in: H.W. Briggs, "Reservations to the Acceptance of Compulsory Jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice", 93 Recueil des Cours de l'Académie de Droit International de La Haye (1958) p. 273. And cf. also: P. Guggenheim, Traité de Droit international public, vol. I, Genève, Georg, 1967, p. 279; and, in general, J. Sicault, "Du caractère obligatoire des engagements unilatéraux en Droit international public", 83 Revue générale de Droit international public (1979) pp. 633-688. - Such distorted State practice cannot, definitively, serve as model to the operation of the judicial organs created by human rightgs treaties. 42 . And always bearing in mind that the protection of fundamental rights places us precisely in the domain of jus cogens. In this respect, in an intervention in the debates of 12.03.1986 of the Vienna Conference on the Law of Treaties between States and International Organizations or between International Organizations, I saw it fit to warn as to the manifest incompatibility with the concept of jus cogens of the voluntarist conception of international law, which is not able even to explain the formation of the rules of general international law; cf. U.N., United Nations Conference on the Law of Treaties between States and International Organizations or between International Organizations (Vienna, 1986) - Official Records, volume I, N.Y., U.N., 1995, pp. 187-188 (intervention of A.A. Cançado Trindade).