Judicial Review of Constitutional Amendments in Ecuador: An Open Door to Dismemberment?

Abstract

Drawing on the concepts developed by Professor Richard Albert in his book Constitutional Amendments: Making, Breaking, and Changing Constitutions, this paper examines whether judicial review of constitutional changes could lead to dismemberment in Ecuador. To that end, the article explores the varying levels of rigidity applied when analyzing constitutional changes in Ecuador and considers whether the Constitutional Court might generate dismemberments through its review of such proposals and its role as the ultimate interpreter of the Constitution. The paper concludes that overly lax judicial review encourages dismemberment, and that a court could produce abrupt constitutional changes through interpretation only if it clearly exceeds its authority, in a way that cannot be justified by the principles of constitutional interpretation.