Together with the expansive process of human rights constitutional declarations, in addition to the writ of habeas corpus and of habeas data, Latin American constitutions created a specific judicial remedy for the protection of constitutional rights, known as the suit, action, recourse, or writ of amparo. After spreading throughout Latin America, it was incorporated in the American Convention of Human Rights. It is similar to the 'injunctions' and the other equitable remedies of the United States legal system. This book examines, with a comparative constitutional law approach, trends in the constitutional and legal regulations in all Latin American countries regarding the amparo proceeding. It is an abridged version of the course of lectures the author gave at the Columbia Law School analyzing the regulations of the seventeen amparo statutes in force in Latin America, as well as the regulation on the amparo guarantee established in Article 25 of the American Convention on Human Rights.

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Examines the process of dismantling the democratic institutions and protections in Venezuela under the Hugo Chávez regime. The actions of the Chávez government have influenced similar processes and undemocratic manoeuvrings in Ecuador, Bolivia, and Honduras. Since the election of Hugo Chávez as president of Venezuela in 1998, a sinister form of nationalistic authoritarianism has arisen at the expense of long-established democratic standards. During the past decade, the 1999 Venezuelan Constitution has been systematically attacked by all branches of the Chávez government, particularly by the Supreme Tribunal of Justice, which has legitimized the Chávez-ordered constitutional violations. The Chávez regime has purposely defrauded the Constitution and severely restricted representative government, all in the name of a supposedly participatory democracy controlled by a popularly supported central government. This volume illustrates how an authoritarian, nondemocratic government has been established in Venezuela.

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In all democratic states, constitutional courts, which are traditionally empowered to invalidate or to annul unconstitutional statutes, have the role of interpreting and applying the Constitution to preserve its supremacy and to ensure the prevalence of fundamental rights. In this sense, they were traditionally considered "negative legislators," unable to substitute for the legislators or to enact legislative provisions that could not be deduced from the Constitution. During the past decade, the role of constitutional courts has dramatically changed, as their role is no longer limited to declaring the unconstitutionality of statutes or annulling them. Today, constitutional courts condition their decisions on the presumption of constitutionality of statutes, opting to interpret them according to or in harmony with the Constitution to preserve them, instead of deciding their annulment or declaring them unconstitutional. More frequently, constitutional courts, instead of dealing with existing legislation, assume the role of assistants or auxiliaries to the legislator, creating provisions they deduce from the Constitution when controlling the absence of legislation or legislative omissions. In some cases, they act as "positive legislators," issuing temporary or provisional rules to be applied pending the enactment of legislation. This book analyzes this new role of the constitutional courts, conditioned by the principles of progressiveness and of prevalence of human rights, particularly regarding the important rediscovery of the right to equality and nondiscrimination.