¿Qué es una Constitución? — Transcript

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1. 0:07It is a great pleasure to greet you all
2. 0:09. On this occasion, I want to talk to
3. 0:13you about the concept of a Constitution
4. 0:15, an absolutely indispensable concept
5. 0:18for everyone who studies legal sciences
6. 0:20, for all law students, and also for
7. 0:23all lawyers practicing the profession.
8. 0:27What is a Constitution? A Constitution
9. 0:30is a set of legal norms of the utmost
10. 0:33importance within contemporary legal
11. 0:35systems, which fulfills at least five
12. 0:37different functions. In the first place
13. 0:43, a Constitution recognizes human
14. 0:45rights, that is, those rights that
15. 0:48preserve the most important legal
16. 0:50assets: uh, rights of liberty, rights
17. 0:53of equality, rights of legal certainty,
18. 0:56social rights, and rights of democratic
19. 0:59participation. This entire set of norms
20. 1:04, uh, surrounding human rights, are
21. 1:06found centrally in constitutional
22. 1:09systems and also in international human
23. 1:12rights treaties. Secondly, a
24. 1:15Constitution establishes the separation
25. 1:18of powers and it does so in two
26. 1:19different ways. At first, in a context
27. 1:24of horizontal division of power through
28. 1:27the three traditional branches known in
29. 1:29the history of political theory, which
30. 1:32are the executive branch, the
31. 1:34legislative branch, and the judicial
32. 1:37branch. And to these traditional
33. 1:41branches, the so-called autonomous
34. 1:42constitutional bodies have recently
35. 1:44been added, which are also provided for
36. 1:46at the constitutional level. But this
37. 1:48is, as I say, one dimension of the
38. 1:50horizontal separation of powers. To
39. 1:52this, we must add a vertical dimension
40. 1:55of the separation of powers through the
41. 1:58structuring of forms of state, for
42. 2:01example, federalist or, uh, with
43. 2:03recognition of autonomous communities
44. 2:06or regions with certain degrees of
45. 2:08autonomy; autonomous communities, as in
46. 2:11Spain; regions, as in Italy or, uh,
47. 2:14Colombia, for example. And also federal
48. 2:18states, as is the case of Mexico, where
49. 2:20there is a federal level precisely,
50. 2:22another in the federal entities, a
51. 2:24municipal one, and that of Mexico City.
52. 2:28This division into different levels of
53. 2:30government also represents an
54. 2:32expression of the principle of the
55. 2:34separation of powers as a second major
56. 2:37element that every Constitution
57. 2:39establishes. The third has to do with
58. 2:43the sources of law. Hans Kelsen had
59. 2:46already explained this since the first
60. 2:47decades of the 20th century.
61. 2:50Contemporary constitutions establish
62. 2:53what the existing legal mechanisms in a
63. 2:56system are through which new norms can
64. 2:59be introduced into that system, the
65. 3:01content of existing norms can be
66. 3:04modified, or norms can also be removed
67. 3:07from the system. So the topic of the
68. 3:11constitutional treatment of sources of
69. 3:13law is equally of the utmost importance
70. 3:16. A fifth, a fourth topic, a fourth
71. 3:20topic of every Constitution is that it
72. 3:22determines its supremacy. This is
73. 3:26something that can be done in two
74. 3:27different ways. The Constitution
75. 3:30understood as a supreme norm expressly,
76. 3:33explicitly, through its own text; in
77. 3:36Mexico, this is carried out by
78. 3:38constitutional article 133. And in
79. 3:43another vein, in some other
80. 3:44constitutions, it can be done
81. 3:46implicitly, precisely through the
82. 3:48regulation of human rights, on one hand
83. 3:50, and the sources of law, on the other;
84. 3:53insofar as those sources condition the
85. 3:55validity of the rest of the norms and,
86. 3:57therefore, there is a, uh, legal
87. 3:59relationship of supra to subordination
88. 4:02between the Constitution as the source
89. 4:04of sources and the rest of the legal
90. 4:06system. And finally, the last task of
91. 4:11every Constitution in the modern sense
92. 4:14is that it establishes the fundamental
93. 4:16values of a nation, of a country, of a
94. 4:19political community. The representation
95. 4:24of the political philosophy of a time,
96. 4:27the appreciation for values such as
97. 4:29some of those already mentioned,
98. 4:31equality, liberty, uh, legal security,
99. 4:34the common good, our conceptions of
100. 4:36justice. In a very, very broad sense,
101. 4:40they are gathered in modern
102. 4:43constitutional texts, which are also
103. 4:45supported by an ideology, a set of
104. 4:48ideas that gives philosophical
105. 4:51sustenance to constitutions and which
106. 4:54we call constitutionalism.
107. 4:57Constitutionalism that arises in the
108. 5:00thought, uh, of the Enlightenment with
109. 5:03authors like Thomas Hobbes, like John
110. 5:06Locke, like Montesquieu, like Alexis de
111. 5:09Tocqueville, like the American
112. 5:11federalists James Madison, Alexander
113. 5:14Hamilton, John Jay, throughout the
114. 5:17entire philosophy of 19 th-century
115. 5:19liberalism, in a set of ideas that
116. 5:22seeks to protect freedoms, the rights
117. 5:25of people, dividing power through the
118. 5:29conception of a supreme norm that is,
119. 5:31precisely, the Constitution. Thank you
120. 5:34for your attention to this segment from
121. 5:36the Carbonell Legal Studies Center. Huh
122. 5:47.