PhD. in Constitutional and Administrative Law
The crisis of the judicial system in Bolivia has ceased to be a novelty and become part of our daily resignation. We have grown accustomed to the progressive deterioration of the justice system, yet an alarming figure in Sucre starkly reflects the true magnitude of this institutional predicament; at the Plurinational Constitutional Court (TCP), more than 20,000 cases currently accumulate without even having been assigned by lot for the issuance of their respective judgments, gathering dust instead in the Admission Commission.
It is worth pausing to consider the significance of this figure. These are not complex rulings in the drafting stage, but rather backlogged case files waiting to enter the lottery system to be assigned to a reporting magistrate. This transcends any merely administrative deficiency; it constitutes objective evidence that the supreme interpreter of the Constitution has failed to fulfill its essential function of guaranteeing prompt and timely justice.
To grasp the gravity of this procedural backlog, one need only recall the nature of the matters that reach this forum. Minor disputes do not come before the TCP, but rather writs of habeas corpus, constitutional amparo remedies, challenges against unlawful tax assessments, or actions of unconstitutionality, among others. They are, by definition, extraordinary and urgent mechanisms designed to restore fundamental rights against overreach by public authorities or private parties. That more than twenty thousand cases remain in the anteroom of the lottery system is equivalent to keeping tens of thousands of citizens, families, workers, and productive actors in a state of legal uncertainty. When constitutional protection is indefinitely postponed, the body entrusted with safeguarding rights ultimately validates, by omission, the very infringement it was meant to remedy.
Nevertheless, the most critical aspect of this procedural delay lies not solely in its volume but in its asymmetric treatment. While the ordinary citizen or taxpayer watches their appeals wait for years for a turn in the lottery, that very same Court has demonstrated remarkable swiftness in processing and resolving advisory requests, precautionary measures, or actions linked to the political juncture in several cases. This disparity in standards has ultimately established a two-speed system of constitutional justice; exceedingly agile for controversies of political relevance and excessively slow for the guarantees of the ordinary citizen.
In the realm of personal, patrimonial, and administrative rights, this delay produces consequences that are often irreversible. Those who turn to constitutional justice observe that the initial ruling of a departmental constitutional chamber does not always suspend the coercive claims of the administration nor halt the execution of acts tainted by nullity. During the years in which the case file awaits its lottery assignment in Sucre, the effects of the contested act are consummated; undue restrictions on personal liberty are prolonged, disputed tax collections are enforced, third-party assets are auctioned off, productive units are shut down, and unlawful dismissals are consolidated; naturally, countless other examples exist. By the time the TCP finally issues its judgment on review, the pronouncement usually proves belated and ineffective regarding human, labor, or patrimonial rights that have already suffered irreparable harm.
This scenario is not the product of chance, but rather the result of more than fifteen years of accumulated institutional weakening. It began from the premise that electing magistrates by popular vote would strengthen the legitimacy of the judiciary, yet in practice the prior preselection filter within the Legislative Assembly displaced meritocracy, academic rigor, and professional suitability in favor of quotas and purely political interests. To this structural flaw were subsequently added the provisional status of judges and the continuance of magistrates beyond their constitutional mandate, severely undermining the principle of legality and legal certainty. A court mired in questions regarding its own exercise of office scarcely meets the conditions of stability and independence necessary to clear the twenty thousand pending cases of litigants.
Overcoming this crisis demands much more than palliative measures or a mere turnover of authorities under the very same rules that generated the collapse.
A serious institutional agreement that eradicates political interference in the courts proves indispensable. This requires entrusting the preselection of the high courts to genuinely independent technical commissions, building a judicial career strictly grounded in merit, enforcing statutory liabilities for the breach of procedural deadlines, and bringing transparency through a public audit to the case assignment lottery system at the TCP.
When the body entrusted with safeguarding constitutional supremacy fails to fulfill its mandate, the entire structure of the State is left exposed to legal uncertainty. Unblocking those more than 20,000 pending cases and demanding that the Plurinational Constitutional Court assume its true role as an impartial guarantor is today the minimum condition to recover the Rule of Law; otherwise, we will have resigned our destiny to a country where justice ceased to be a real value and became a mere utopia.
