Constitutional justice and legal reasoning

Abstract

In this essay the author presents the need to assume a theory that demands legal debate as a means of legitimation in the proceedings of constitutional courts and tribunals, given they play an important role in the definition of legal conflicts and the assignment of rights. In this task it is important to identify the preconceptions that inarguably conform the judicial discretion that comes together with the constitutional judgment. The author identifies three "attitudes" or ideologies that condition the interpretations of the Constitution as a matter of fact: first, oriented to the accuracy to the text. Second, one that is skeptical in the face of the semantic limits. And third, an intermediare between both positions, as it accepts the text as a starting point of the whole process of constitutional argumentation, which must respond to the proposed problem, always searching for a rational result to a constitutional case where it is impossible not to consider the practical reasoning and the moral commitments. The author assigns a core role to the rational argumentadon theory.