SEPARATE CONCURRING OPINION OF JUDGE SERGIO GARCIA RAMIREZ IN THE JUDGMENT OF THE INTER-AMERICAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE CASE OF TIBI V. ECUADOR, OF SEPTEMBER 7, 2004 I. Meaning and significance of the rulings of the Inter-American Court 1. In this Separate concurring opinion that I am attaching to the Judgment on preliminary objections, merits and reparations in the CASE OF TIBI V. ECUADOR, issued by the Inter-American Court on September 7, 2004, I intend to refer to several issues addressed in said ruling, as well as to the meaning that the judgments and advisory opinions of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights have, and the significance they should have. In 2004, this Court is completing twenty-five years of work since it was established on September 3, 1979, in reliance on the American Convention on Human Rights, signed in San Jose, Costa Rica, on November 22, 1969. As I examine those specific issues –especially due process and conditions of detention- I will make remarks and state arguments that are an approximation to the jurisprudence of the Inter-American Court over these years. 2. As has often been said, inter-American jurisprudence is not and does not intend to be a new and ultimate instance in proceedings begun and heard under domestic venues. Its role is not to review domestic proceedings, the way this is done under domestic venue. Its purpose is a different one: to address the acts and situations generated in the national framework from the standpoint of the provisions of the international treaties that give the Court jurisdiction over adjudicatory matters, especially the American Convention on Human Rights, to issue –on this basisguidelines with a broad value as indications for the States Party to the Convention, in addition to their mandatory efficacy –the binding nature of the judgment, as an individualized legal norm- regarding the State that is formally and materially a party to the proceeding. 3. In a certain sense, the task of the Court is similar to that of the constitutional courts. The latter examine the challenged acts –decisions with a general scope- in light of the legal standards, principles, and values of the basic laws The InterAmerican Court, in turn, analyzes the acts that are brought before it in connection with the legal standards, principles, and values of the treaties on which it bases its adjudicatory jurisdiction. In other words, if constitutional courts oversee “constitutionality,” the international human rights court decides on the “conventionality” of those acts. By controlling constitutionality, the domestic bodies seek to ensure that activities of the public authorities –and, perhaps, of other social agents- are in accordance with the order that is inherent to the Rule of Law in a democratic society. The inter-American Court, in turn, seeks to ensure that this activity is in accordance with the international order set forth in the convention that founded the inter-American jurisdiction and was accepted by the States Party exercising their sovereignty. 4. Just as a constitutional court could not and does not intend to bring before it all cases in which the constitutionality of acts and legal standards is questioned, an international human rights court does not have the aspiration –and has it even less so than the national body- of solving a large number of contentious cases that reproduce violations previously brought before it, and on whose essential themes it has already issued judgments that express its criterion as the natural interpreter of the legal standards that it has the responsibility of applying, that is, the provisions of the international treaty invoked by the litigants. This design, which clearly expresses a function of the Court, also suggests the characteristics that matters brought before it may have.