RE-ELECTION AND ABUSIVE-CONSTITUCIONALISM

CONTRIBUTIONS OF THE INTER-AMERICAN COURT IN THE CONSULTATIVE OPINION Nº 28/21

Abstract

The present paper aims to analyze the decision of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in Advisory Opinion nº 28/21, which declared incompatible with the Regional System the institute of indefinite reelection, in order to answer the following problem: the democratic elements established by the Court for judging the institute's compatibility with the American Convention, do they serve as parameters to contain practices of Latin American constitutional setbacks? For that, an inductive methodology is adopted. Thus, from the case of the Advisory Opinion under analysis, the aim is to extract the parameters to be adopted in other cases of democratic setbacks through abusive constitutional changes in the Latin American scenario, with the hypothesis that these parameters can be applied to similar cases. In order to achieve this objective, the development of the work addresses, in the first place, the institute of reelection and the Bolivian option for indefinite reelections. Next, the judgment of AO nº 28/21 will be analyzed and the elements that can be extracted from its decision. Finally, an assessment of its applicability to cases of abusive Latin American constitutionalism will be promoted. It is concluded, finally, that those parameters are partially capable of containing more evident constitutional setbacks, but apparently powerless to be replicated in general terms as a form of containment to other cases of democratic abuse.