The legal evolution of equality in the Central American constitutional bloc

Abstract

It is true that the fundamental right to equality is a guarantee provided for in supranational regulatory provisions. Since the emergence of important critical junctures in public international law, equality has represented the starting point for the transformation of societies that have now established themselves as republican political systems. However, it is also true that, from a legal point of view, the effects of the provision and guarantee of the fundamental right to equality vary from one territory to another. This academic contribution first presents the constitutional designs of Central America in terms of the normative provision of the right to equality; then, it problematizes the differentiated implications of protection, guarantee, and provision that citizens face in that region. This analysis seeks to argue that, even though legal systems have constitutionalized equality as a right, inequalities persist that the law has proven insufficient to address.