Motivación en las sentencias emitidas por los jueces de primer nivel en Ecuador

Abstract

Abstract: The motivation behind the decisions of public authorities is fundamental to their legitimacy, since it requires a rational justification for the actions. The Constitutional Court of Ecuador maintains that the ideal motivation is that it be correct, which implies optimal factual and normative grounding. However, the constitutional guarantee of motivation, established in Article 76, paragraph 7, subparagraph l of the Constitution, focuses on the motivation being sufficient. This means that the decision must state the legal norms or principles on which it is based and explain their relevance to the facts of the case; otherwise, it will be null and void. The Court has identified three types of motivational deficiency: non-existence (total absence of grounds), insufficiency (defective fulfillment of the minimum elements), and apparent deficiencies (when, at first glance, it seems sufficient, but presents flaws such as incoherence, irrelevance, incongruity, or incomprehensibility). The Court has explicitly moved away from the previous "motivation test," considering that it distorted the scope of this guarantee by requiring correct rather than sufficient motivation.