Los derechos del Buen Vivir en el sistema constitucional ecuatoriano

Abstract

According to the Constitution of the Republic of Ecuador, the supreme principle and value that governs the life of the society and the Ecuadorian Government is Sumak Kawsay or Good Living. This expression, belon- ging to the ancestral people who have been living in this country since pre-Hispanic times, refers to the relationship that human beings have with themselves, with their fellow human beings, with the environment that surrounds them and with the divinity, in a constant balance that helps them to fulfil themselves by discovering themselves as a harmo- nious part of its entireness. By contemplating this philosophy as part of the 2008 constitutional text, it has become a mandatory norm within the Ecuadorian State, but its establishment has been difficult, especially in the legal field, which has traditionally been handled from an exclusionary positivist approach. In this sense, this thesis carries out an in-depth analysis of Sumak Kawsay: its origins, its relationship with the theory of fundamental rights and transformational Andean constitutionalism, and the development it has achieved mainly through public policies over the fourteen years in which the Constitutional state of rights and justice has been in effect. In this order of ideas, an attempt has been made in order to build up a constitutional theory aiming to demonstrate that the rights of Good Living have a justification in the context of the Andean constitutionalism, differentiating it from other Western typologies such as ESCR or even collective rights, with which Ecuadorian constitutionalism classifies sev- eral of the Rights of Good Living as fundamental and even Good Living itself. Enriched law, inculcated with foreign norms, appropriating their contents and converting them into manifestations of Sumak Kawsay