12 34. In my opinion, given the encouraging intersection of purpose between domestic and international legal systems in regard to safeguarding human rights, there is no reason why domestic public law should not take into account the application of international norms of human rights protection. In a Seminar for Caribbean judicial officers in Barbados ten years ago, the participants specifically emphasized the need to reduce the décalage between the considerable evolution of International Human Rights Law in the past decades and the “narrower perspective” of contemporary Caribbean constitutionalism. 46 The foundation for bridging this gap appears to be already established, as in the last years, Caribbean legal doctrine has directed its attention towards the advancements made in the normative and hermeneutic realms of human rights protection at the international level; 47 this trend should continue in the same direction. 35. In an era such as the present, in today’s overcrowded, mechanized world, in which fewer and fewer people actually stop to think, it seems to be the opportune moment to refer to the insight of the German jurist Gustav Radbruch, who, in his last years of teaching in Heidelburg (in the middle of the 20th century), formulated an eloquent defence of natural law, which delves into both international and criminal law. For Radbruch, the “entrance” of international law into the sphere of legal science was brought about “thanks to natural law.” 48 According to his vision, the resources provided by natural law “are immense,” namely [Natural law] opened up the eyes of humanity to reveal its chains, thus teaching humanity to shed itself of them. In the name of the inalienable human right to freedom, it struggled against slavery (…); undermined the absolutism of government (…), It safeguarded individuality from the arbitrariness of police abuses and proclaimed the idea of the Republic of Law; it fundamentally corrected criminal law, by opposing justice that is based on arbitrariness and establishing specific categories of crimes; it eliminated the corporal punishment of mutilation as incompatible with human dignity, it abolished criminal procedures employing torture and persecuted the persecutors of witches. (…) Without the any reservations whatsoever, we should thank the proponents of natural law, particularly those that brought freedom to the 19th century, not only through the influence that they exercised over the legislative process, but also through the influence that they exercised over its practice, such as the shame brought about by the insistence to continue applying the letter of the law in applying practices of corporal punishment and torture provided for in a judicial ordinance from the times of Carlos V. 49 46 Cf. Derrick McKoy, “Capital and Corporal Punishment in Human Rights Law,” in Seminar for Caribbean Judicial Officers on International Human Rights Norms and the Judicial Function (Proceedings of the 1993 Barbados Seminar, eds. O. Jackman and A.A. Cançado Trindade), San José, Bridgetown, 1995, p.51-76. 47 Cf. e.g., Lloyd Barnett, “Human Rights and the Machinery of Justice- Caribbean Judicial Approach to Constitutional and Conventional Human Rights Provisions,” in Seminar for Caribbean Judicial Officers…, op. cit. supra n. (24), pp. 31-49; and cf., M. Demerieux, Fundamental Rights in Commonwealth Caribbean Counstitutions, Bridgetown, University of the West Indies, 1992, pp. 115-123, 134-135, 144, 152 and 301. 48 Cf. e.g., Association Internationale Vitoria-Suárez, Vitoria et Suárez- Contribution des théologiens au droit international moderne, Paris , Pédone, 1939, pp. 3-170; L. Le Fur, “La theorie du droit naturel depuis le XVIIe. siècle et la doctrine moderne,” 18 Recueil de Cours de l’Académie de Droit International de La Haye (1927) pp. 297-399; J. Puente Egido, “Natural Law,” in Encyclopedia of Public International Law (ed. R. Bernhardt, Max Plack Institute), vol. 7, Amsterdam, North-Holland, 1984, pp. 344-349; A.A. Cancado Trindade, O Direito Internacional em um Mundo em Trasformação, Rio de Janerio, Ed. Renovar, 2002, pp. 540-550 and 1048-1109. 49 G. Radbruch, Introducción a la Filosofía del Derecho, 3a ed., Mexico/ Buenos Aires, Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1965, p. 112-113 (Translation by the Secretariat of the Court).