Constitución del Ecuador

The Ecuadorian Constitution of 2008, officially called the Constitution of the Republic of Ecuador, is the supreme legal norm in force in Ecuador. It replaced the 1998 Constitution. It was drafted by the National Constituent Assembly that held sessions between 2007 and 2008; And then, the normative text was submitted to a constitutional referendum, being approved by universal suffrage, obtaining 63.93% of the valid votes. The approved text was sent and published in the Official Registry and has been in force as a national constitution since October 20, 2008.

The 2008 Constitution is established as the highest legal norm within the Ecuadorian legal system, prioritizing even over international conventions and treaties - except for the most beneficial cases of human rights -, organic and ordinary laws, as well as the other norms issued by decentralized autonomous governments of sub-national entities and those drawn up by ministries and public institutions. This supremacy obliges all the new infra-constitutional norms to be drafted in accordance with the rights and guarantees established in the constitutional text, as well as reforming and repealing the old norms that were opposed to it.

This constitution is denominated as a guarantor within the neo-constitutionalist tendency, and changes the state model from social state to constitutional state of rights and justice. The Ecuadorian constitution of 2008 is made up of a preamble and nine titles, in which the four hundred and forty-four articles are included; however, according to his study, it is divided into the dogmatic part in which the catalogs of fundamental rights and jurisdictional guarantees are found, and the organic part in which the state structure is organized. Unlike the previous constitutions, the 2008 Constitution establishes the separation of functions into five, the traditional three (executive, legislative and judicial) and two new ones: the electoral one and the transparency and social control function.

Since its enactment in 2008, the current constitution has undergone three modifications to its original text through two reforms and one amendment in 2011, 2014 and 2018. The main changes have revolved around the indefinite re-election of authorities, referring issues to the administration of justice, deadlines in criminal proceedings, among others.