Les controverses autour de l’intérêt à agir pour l’accès au juge constitutionnel : de la défense du droit à l’environnement (Costa Rica) à la défense des droits de la nature (Équateur)

• Main Author: Edgar Fernandez Fernandez
• Format: Article
• Language: fra
• Published: Éditions en environnement VertigO 2015-09-01
• Series: VertigO
• Subjects: Access to courts; standing to sue; diffuse interests; interests of collectivity; popular action; right to a healthy and ecologically equilibrated environment
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/vertigo/16214

Many modern constitutional systems recognize, under different names and adjectives, a fundamental right to environment. One of the basic guarantees they establish is the simple, informal, free and universal access to appropriate procedures and judges for the effective judicial protection of this right. At the same time, one of the main aspects on which this access relies is the defendant’s standing to sue. Even though nature can be indirectly protected by the respect of the right to environment, one country, Equator, recently gave a step forward to a most effective protection by recognizing in its constitution the legal personality and the fundamental rights of nature. In this framework, a very broad standing to sue has been recognized in order to have access to courts and defend these rights. What is the legal basis for standing to sue in these cases ? Who has standing to sue to defend nature or the environment ? Who can represent them ? We intend to answer these questions through the analysis of two legal systems in which a very broad standing to sue has been recognized for accessing the constitutional court : The first one is Costa Rica’s, in the framework of the defense of the right to a healthy and ecologically equilibrated environment. The second is Equator’s, for the defense of rights of nature.