Ejecución de sentencias constitucionales en Ecuador: crítica a la acción de incumplimiento y fortalecimiento del juez de garantías.

Abstract

Constitutional judgment enforcement constitutes an essential dimension of effective judicial protection in a constitutional state based on rights and justice. In Ecuador, despite the broad recognition of rights and the availability of jurisdictional guarantees, a persistent gap remains between the judicial recognition of rights and their material realization, particularly in judgments issued in action for protection proceedings. This essay offers a critical analysis of the action for non-compliance within the Ecuadorian constitutional system, focusing on its subsidiary, formalistic, and highly centralized nature in the Constitutional Court and, drawing on doctrinal, case law, and comparative law approaches, examines the practical limitations of this mechanism and the tension between the powers of the Constitutional Court and those of lower-court judges in ensuring the full enforcement of constitutional judgments. The essay argues that the current design of the system imposes unnecessary burdens on rights holders who have obtained a favorable judgment; this configuration hinders an immediate response to non-compliance by the obligated party and, in practice, undermines the effectiveness of integral reparation. Based on this diagnosis, it proposes amendments to Articles 22, 163, and 164 of the Organic Law on Jurisdictional Guarantees and Constitutional Control (LOGJCC), so that the judge who issued the judgment may hear constitutional enforcement incidents and adopt progressive measures of compliance, procedural coercion, and monitoring. The action for non-compliance would thus be reserved for the Constitutional Court only in exceptional situations, such as serious non-compliance, structural problems, the need for jurisprudential unification, or the control of potential excesses by lower-court judges.