CONCURRING VOTE OF JUDGE A.A. CANÇADO TRINDADE
1.
I have concurred with my vote to the adoption of the Judgment made by the
Inter-American Court of Human Rights in the case of López Álvarez versus Honduras.
Given the importance of a matter dealt with in the present Judgment, I am in the
obligation to spread upon the record my reflections regarding the same, as the basis
for my position in this sense. I am referring to the central axis made up by the right to
access (lato sensu) justice and the guarantees of the due process of law, taken
necessarily as a whole, with regard to Article 1(1) of the American Convention. I take
the right in this Vote to the present case of López Álvarez to reiterate some
considerations that I developed in my Concurring Vote of yesterday’s Judgment, of
only 24 hours ago, in the case of the Massacre of Pueblo Bello versus Colombia.
2
These considerations, in support to the decision of the Court of having
determined a joint violation of Articles 8 and 25 of the American Convention, pursuant
to its constant case-law, cover the following aspects of the subject: a) Articles 25 and
8 of the American Convention in the ontological and hermeneutic levels; b) genesis of
the right to an effective recourse before the domestic courts in the corpus juris of the
International Law on Human Rights; c) the right to an effective recourse in the
jurisprudential construction of the Inter-American Court; d) the inseparability to
dissociate between the access to justice (right to an effective recourse) and the
guarantees of the due process of law (Articles 25 and 8 of the American Convention);
e) the inseparability between Articles 25 and 8 of the American Convention in the
constant case-law of the Inter-American Court; f) the inseparability between Articles
25 and 8 of the American Convention as an intangible jurisprudential advance; g) the
overcoming of the vicissitudes regarding the right to an effective recourse in the
jurisprudential construction of the European Court; h) the right to access justice lato
sensu; and i) the right to Law as an imperative of the jus cogens.
I.
Articles 25 and 8 of the American Convention, in the Ontological
and Hermeneutic Levels.
3.
It is axiomatic that the rights protected by the human rights treaties have, each
of them, their own material content, from which their different formulations derive
naturally, - as is the case of Articles 25 and 8 of the American Convention. This is an
essentially ontological level. Despite the fact that they are provided with their own
material content, some of said rights have had to go through a long jurisprudential
evolution to reach their autonomy. This is the case, for example, of the right to an
effective recourse, under Article 25 of the American Convention and Article 13 of the
European Convention of Human Rights (cf. infra). It is also the case of Article 8 of the
American Convention and Article 6 of the European Convention.
4.
The meaning it has today is the result of a jurisprudential construction, and
they are currently understood differently from what motivated their original
formulation. The fact that the rights protected have their own material content and
autonomy does not mean that one may not be related with the others, in reason of the
circumstances of the cas d'espèce; all the contrary, said interrelationship is, in my
opinion, what offers, in the light of the indivisibility of all human rights, a more
effective protection. Here we go from the ontological plan to the hermeneutic level.