Preventive Habeas Corpus as a Constitutional Guarantee of the Right to Liberty in Latin American Legislation

Jurisdictional guarantees are legal mechanisms that serve to enforce the enjoyment of human and constitutional rights. In Ecuador these guarantees are embodied by the Constitution of the Republic and the Organic Law of Jurisdictional Guarantees and Constitutional Control. One of these rights is the right to freedom, the right of every human being to act according to his will, respecting the law, values and the rights of others. Freedom is a very broad right that has several meanings that makes it difficult to establish a single definition of this right, however, to ensure the freedom of those citizens who are illegally, arbitrarily and unjustly detained, as well as to safeguard the life and personal integrity and other related rights of the detainee, the legislature has established habeas corpus, as a legal action that can be observed not only in Ecuadorian law but also in several countries. Some States have divided habeas corpus in order to broaden its scope and objective. The purpose of this article is to conduct a study of preventive habeas corpus in order to establish similarities and differences in this jurisdictional guarantee within the Latin American context.