Resumo

VERNAZA ARROYO, Girard David  e  CUTIE MUSTELIER, Danelia. The Rights of Nature from the Perspective of Judges in Ecuador. Rev. IUS [online]. 2022, vol.16, n.49, pp.285-311.  Epub 06-Jun-2022. ISSN 1870-2147.  https://doi.org/10.35487/rius.v16i49.2022.760.

The recognition of rights to nature in the Ecuadorian Constitution of 2008 constitutes an unprecedented milestone; but its consecration at the constitutional level is not enough. The theoretical construction of the elements that configure such rights is imperative, of which the current legal regulation has the following characteristics: the dispersion, vagueness and ambiguity of its content, and at times that the development of jurisprudence has been limited. More than ten years have elapsed since its categorization in the constitutional text and only a few cases have reached judicial instances -such as the Constitutional Court of Ecuador- from which it is not yet possible to extract sufficient jurisprudential criteria to make an overall evaluation. Given this reality, this paper aims to analyze the interpretive work of the Constitutional Court of Ecuador in relation to the rights of nature, and the identification of obstacles that affect access to environmental justice for the achievement of effective protection of these rights in court.

Palavras-chave : Rights of nature; constitutional jurisprudence; environmental justice.