La facultad del control constitucional frente al principio de la reserva de Ley en Materia Sustantiva Penal.

Abstract

With the enforcement of the Constitutional State of Rights and Justice, the Constitutional Court has assumed a preeminent role in strengthening its exclusive powers aimed at safeguarding, among other things, the principle of constitutional supremacy. Hence, its attributions encompass both the power of constitutional control in its various forms and all those inherent to the interpretation and administration of justice as a Final Court in this matter. In this context, with the issuance of Judgment 67-23-IN/24, dated February 5, 2024, which paves the way for the possibility of applying euthanasia procedures in Ecuador, the Constitutional Court, by declaring the conditional constitutionality of Article 144 of the Comprehensive Organic Criminal Code, incorporates into the substantive precept conditions for exclusion of liability regarding the crime of homicide, with the aim that doctors, when applying euthanasia procedures, are not subject to criminal liability, modifying the structure of the criminal type, which would imply an impact on the principle of legal reservation in substantive criminal matters. In developing this work, the aim is to analyze the scope of the abstract constitutional control action for which the Constitutional Court is competent, in Judgment 67-23- IN/24, and to confront it with the principle of legal reservation in substantive criminal matters, in order to determine whether or not this latter principle is affected in that decision, through the use of qualitative methodology, which includes the collection and analysis of bibliographic sources, and comparative analysis of judgments in this area.