Democracy and Constitutional Justice

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to strengthen the principle that in order for a system of constitutional judicial review, to function, as a support for the construction of the rule of law, there must exist a representative democratic system as the basis a State subject to a Constitution, organized in accordance with the principle of the separation and independence of public powers. whose actions must always be subject to legality, and subject to judicial review, through autonomous and independent judges. On the contrary, if the body called upon to exercise constitutional judicial review is an organ controlled by the political power of the day, instead of being the guardian of the Constitution, the rule of law and democracy, it turns out to be ultimately the most fantastic instrument at the service of authoritarianism for its destruction. This is what has happened, for example, in Venezuela, where it has been precisely the Constitutional Judge, the one that has demolished the representative and participatory democratic principles; has eliminated the principle of the republican alternation of government; has arbitrarily imposed the functioning of governments without democratic legitimacy;  has violated the political and electoral rights of citizens; and finally, has destroyed the separation of powers, intervening, among others, in the Electoral Power, and kidnapping and usurping the Legislative Power; all with serious violations of fundamental rights and freedom.