CONSTITUTIONAL COURTS IN LATIN AMERICA AND ITS TENSIONS WITH EXECUTIVE BRANCH

DIFFICULTIES, STRATEGIES AND CHALLENGES

Abstract

This paper has a purpose to investigate what is the role of the Constitutional Courts in Latin America, considering institutional and regional peculiarities of the different countries, as well as their more or less democratic contexts. From this resource, it analyzes, specify, how the region's Constitutional Courts behave when confronted with political interests and political elites, what are their peculiarities and similarities, how they are shaped by their institutions, their legal culture, their contexts, and their interrelationship with the other Branches. To achieve its objectives, a research is developed based on the choice of a critical-methodological line, based on studies of political science and comparative analysis. In the end, it can be concluded that in Latin America, given the presidential systems adopted, there is great potential for Constitutional Courts to confront the President to strike a balance between the Branches; a strategic calculation is often performed by the Court when a decision is to displease the government or as political elites; how institutional guarantees of judicial independence, a legal culture and conjunctural factors, related to the unity or fragmentation of the government base, may influence the decision of the courts; the role of the Constitutional Courts in Latin American countries is highly complex, and their real ability to improve democratic conditions is much more limited than the standard constitutional theories have suggested.