Chapter 3 • The Major Regional Human Rights Instruments and the Mechanisms for Their Implementation The Court then added that perhaps “the most important of these guarantees is that restrictions to basic rights only be established by a law passed by the Legislature in accordance with the Constitution”.22 The term “laws” in article 30 thus means “formal law”, namely, “a legal norm passed by the legislature and promulgated by the Executive Branch, pursuant to the procedure set out in the domestic law of each State”.23 However, article 30 also links the term “laws” to the “general interest”, which means that “they must have been adopted for the ‘general welfare” as referred to in article 32(2) of the Convention, a concept, which, in the view of the Court, “must be interpreted as an integral element of public order (ordre public) in democratic States, the main purpose of which is ‘the protection of the essential rights of man and the creation of circumstances that will permit him to achieve spiritual and material progress and attain happiness’”.24 As subsequently reaffirmed in its Advisory Opinion on Habeas Corpus, there exists, consequently, “an inseparable bond between the principle of legality, democratic institutions and the rule of law”.25 With regard to the principle of a democratic society, only the limitation provisions concerning the exercise of the right to assembly and the right to freedom of association provide that the limitations must also be “necessary in a democratic society” (emphasis added). However, as emphasized by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in its Advisory Opinion on Compulsory Membership in an Association Prescribed by Law for the Practice of Journalism regarding the right to freedom of expression in article 13, the interpretation of the provisions contained in the American Convention on Human Rights is also conditioned by the restrictions laid down in particular in articles 29(c) and 32(2),26 which respectively provide that “no provision of this Convention shall be interpreted as ... (c) precluding other rights or guarantees that are inherent in the human personality or derived from representative democracy as a form of government”(art. 29(c); emphasis added); and that “the rights of each person are limited by the rights of others, by the security of all, and by the just demands of the general welfare, in a democratic society” (art. 32(2), emphasis added). These articles, in particular, define “the context within which the restrictions permitted under Article 13(2) must be interpreted”; and, in the view of the Court, it followed 22 Ibid., at p. 30. 23 Ibid., p. 32, para. 27. 24 Ibid., p. 33, para. 29. 25 I-A Court HR, Habeas Corpus in Emergency Situations (Art. 27(2), 25(1) and 7(6), Advisory Opinion OC-8/87 of January 30, 1987, Series A, No. 8, p. 40, para. 24. 26 I-A Court HR, Compulsory Membership in an Association Prescribed by Law for the Practice of Journalism (Arts. 13 and 29 American Convention on Human Rights), Advisory Opinion OC-5/85 of November 13, 1985, Series A, No. 5, p. 105, para. 41. Human Rights in the Administration of Justice: A Manual on Human Rights for Judges, Prosecutors and Lawyers 85