Or How a Socialist State Is Imposed on the Venezuelan People, Violating the Constitution and Defrauding the Will of the People)
ABOUT THE POPULAR POWER AND THE COMMUNAL STATE IN VENEZUELA (Or how a Socialist State is imposed on the Venezuelan people, violating the Constitution and defrauding the will of the people) Allan R. Brewer-Carías Professor of Law, Universidad Central de Venezuela Adjunct Professor of Law, Columbia Law School, (2006-2007) Member, Academy of Political and Social Sciences, Venezuela Past Vice-President, International Academy of International Law Partner, Baumeister & Brewer, Caracas, Venezuela (Translation by Ricardo Espina P.) The 1999 Venezuelan Constitution, currently in force, instituted the country as a Democratic and Social State of Law and Justice , “which holds as higher values of its legal system and its performance, life, liberty, justice, equality, solidarity, democracy, social responsibility and, in general, the preeminence of human rights, ethics and political plurality” (Art. 2), organizing the Republic as “a decentralized federal State ” which “is governed by the principles of geographical integrity, cooperation, solidarity, concurrence and shared responsibility” (Art. 4). Such is the Constitutional State in Venezuela: a decentralized Federal Democratic and Social State of Law and Justice 1, based on a vertical distribution of public powers in three territorial levels of government: National level, State level and Municipal level (Art. 136), according to which each level must always have a government of an “elective, decentralized, alternative, responsible, plural, and of revocable mandate” character, as required by Article
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