5 Having agreed to admit the Petition, we determined that our process would be dialogical, rather than adversarial. And, recognizing the transboundary character of climate change, we likewise decided that the dialogue we would be pursuing would be global. Proceeding from the global and dialogical process which we sought to promote, our Commission accepted amici briefs, research studies, and position papers from science and legal experts, professional organizations, the academe, advocates, and duty-bearers from around the globe on the various dimensions of the case. Keenly aware that our Commission, as stated earlier, had neither the power to compel any of the parties to submit before us, nor the power to impose any kind of punitive judgment against them, we conducted our Inquiry upon the principle of persuasion, not compulsion. Thus, we proceeded to issue invitations in lieu of summonses and subpoenas. We were also careful to clarify that we were not entertaining notions of imposing financial judgments against any party. We declared, however, that, despite our limitations, we were determined, indeed, to proceed with our Inquiry. We began the initial phases of our process by conducting interviews, roundtable discussions, expert consultations, and community dialogues. And then we proceeded to the conduct of public hearings. Preparatory to the public hearings, we invited the parties to a pre-hearing conference, during International Human Rights Week, on 11 December 2017. We conducted our first public hearing in March and our last in December, all in 2018. In all, we held twelve public hearings from March to December of 2018: eight hearings were held in Manila, two hearings were held in New York, at the New York City Bar Association building, and two hearings were held in London, at the London School of Economics. In the course of the public hearings, we heard 65 witnesses and received and marked 239 documents, both scientific and legal. These numbers do not include the resource persons invited by our Commission and the documentary evidence submitted by them. In the conduct of our public hearings, we sought to maintain our focus on the substantive aspects of the case, while adhering to internationally-recognized norms of due process of law.