MAMATKULOV AND ASKAROV v. TURKEY JUDGMENT – JOINT PARTLY DISSENTING OPINION 55 on the international level. Firstly, States are entirely free to accept or to refuse compulsory jurisdiction of international courts and, if they do accept it, to limit its scope, for instance by not including rules on the binding character of provisional measures. This is the case in the framework of the arbitration procedure instituted by the Washington (World Bank) Convention of 18 March 1965 on the Settlement of Investment Disputes (Article 47). Secondly, one should not forget that for many years international tribunals such as the Permanent Court of International Justice (1920-39) and its successor, the ICJ, for most of its existence (1946 to 2001), confined themselves to indicating provisional measures without specifying their binding character. Thirdly, Article 34 of the Convention requires States “not to hinder in any way the effective exercise of [the right to make individual applications]” (emphasis added). By not providing for interim measures and, a fortiori, by not vesting them with binding force, the right of individual application is “hindered” in no way; and to say the contrary would stretch the interpretation of Article 34 to a point at which the Court ceases to interpret and assumes legislative functions. That this is so is shown by other instruments of dispute settlement: nowhere else have jurisdiction and the right of application been linked to the issuance and the binding force of interim measures. Thus, in LaGrand, the Hague Court refrained from relying on Article 35 of its Statute – the approximate equivalent of Article 34 of the European Convention on Human Rights – to determine the nature of its interim measures. It interpreted Article 41 of its Statute, finding that that provision would not meet its aim if the measures indicated were optional. If the Convention of 1950 contained a provision comparable to Article 41 of the Statute of the Hague Court, we would likely have concluded, on the basis of that provision, that to “indicate” interim measures must, as a matter of teleological interpretation, mean to “order” or “prescribe” such measures. In the case of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, whose constituent instrument – not Rules of Procedure! – contains a provision similar to Article 41 of the ICJ Statute, this is not even an issue since Article 63 § 2 of the 1969 American Convention on Human Rights enables the Court to order interim measures. The problem in the present case is that there is no reasonable legal basis for drawing a similar conclusion. Article 34 of the Convention cannot serve as such, which makes it impossible to read the notion of binding interim measures into the text of the Convention. 156. The travaux préparatoires of the Convention may be referred to by virtue of Article 32 of the Vienna Convention of Treaties. The European Court's judgment in Cruz Varas shows that, despite proposals to include in the 1950 Convention a provision similar to Article 41 of the Statute of the ICJ, this was not done (p. 34, § 95) – a circumstance which is certainly not favourable