The Legislative Function of The Constitutional Court in Relation to the Omission of the Constituent
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31078/consrev1113Keywords:
Constituent, Constitutional Court, Legislative function, Legislative omissionAbstract
The Constitutional Court is the responsible body for guaranteeing the supremacy of the Constitution and respect for fundamental rights. Among its functions is to control the constitutionality of laws and other legal norms, as well as to resolve conflicts of competence between the different branches of Government. However, the Constitutional Court can act not only against positive norms that violate the Constitution, but also against legislative omissions that imply a breach of constitutional mandates. Legislative omission occurs when the legislator ceases to regulate a matter that the Constitution expressly imposes on him or that is necessary to guarantee the effectiveness of constitutional rights and principles. The objective of this article is to analyze the foundations, the limits and the effects of this legislative function of the Constitutional Court, as well as the main criticisms that have been formulated from the legal and political point of view. For this purpose, a review-type study was formalized, based on narrative as a study method. By using keywords related to this topic such as “constitutional court” or “legislative function” among others and looking for them in the search engines such as Scopus, Wos and Scielo, we got to achieve more than 20 reviews so substantial for this paper. It is concluded that the legislative omission may be absolute or relative, depending on whether or not there is a previous norm that regulates the matter, but that is insufficient or incompatible with the Constitution. The purpose of the control of legislative omission by the Constitutional Court is to restore the validity of the Constitution and protect the legitimate interests of citizens who are affected by the lack of regulation. The Constitutional Court may declare the unconstitutionality by omission by means of the amparo appeal, the unconstitutionality appeal or the unconstitutionality question, as the case may be. The Constitutional Court cannot replace the legislator or issue general rules, but must limit itself to pointing out the failed constitutional duty and setting a deadline for its fulfillment.
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