3 increases in justice-related expenditure, and the construction of new prisons, and accelerated automation and procedural reforms. If no changes are made, the chronic and tragic situation of justice in our countries will only get worse. 20. We must also change the way we approach judicial reforms; it is not enough merely to reduce the time it takes to process a case by about one-third, for example, because the system has already collapsed. We need to reduce the length of the delay of court proceedings much more, ten or twenty times more, aiming at dealing with rulings that can be processed rapidly, making remedies truly simple and prompt, and achieving respect for least a reasonable time. To the contrary, the consequence will be that the Inter-American Court will continue to deliver judgments based on the slowness of the proceedings indefinitely. 21. The general public must be guaranteed access to real, substantial justice; not access to a merely theoretical, rhetoric, symbolic, unreal, virtual, nominal, partial and relative justice. 22. As stated by Bobbio, “una sociedad en la que el gobierno adopte medidas de justicia distributiva que conviertan a los ciudadanos en iguales no sólo formalmente o frente a la ley, como se suele decir, sino también sustancialmente” 2 [A society in which the Government adopts measures of distributive justice that converts the citizens into equals, not only formally or before the law, but also substantially]. III. International protection of the human right to jurisdictional services within a reasonable time 23. We should remember the words of a 1920 address by Ruy Barbosa, the brilliant Brazilian jurist, whose bust adorns the entrance hall of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (beside the Venezuelan, Andrés Bello). According to Barbosa, “justiça atrasada não é justiça, senão injustiça qualificada e manifesta” 3 [Delayed justice is not justice, but true manifest injustice]. This is possibly an elaborate version of the universal juridical aphorism in several languages, for example: justiça atrasada é justiça denegada,” “justice différée est justice refusée,” “justicia atrasada es justicia denegada,” in other words, “justice delayed is justice denied.” 24. The idea of justice done is inconceivable if the injured individual does not receive prompt reparation or, at the very least, does not obtain it within a reasonable time, which varies from one level of the courts to another. While a case is pending judgment, neither party feels that he has received justice. 25. Slowness discourages resorting to the courts to settle disputes (with serious repercussions on the right of access to justice) and a factor that encourages the individual who does not comply with his social obligations or the criminal to act without worrying much about whether or not he will be prosecuted, because most of them are not or, when they are, the offense has prescribed. 26. This is why human rights have established access to justice and to the settlement of disputes within a reasonable time, since the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights: 2 BOBBIO, Norberto. De la ideología democrática a los procedimientos universales. Jurídica Boletín Mexicano de Derecho Comparado, No. 103, January-April 2002. Available at: http://www.juridicas.unam.mx/publica/rev/boletin/ cont/103/inf/inf10.htm. Access: 14 Nov. 2007. 3 BARBOSA, RUY. Oração aos moços. São Paulo: Russel, 2004, p. 47.