Un espejismo en los Andes: sobre la “jerarquía constitucional” de los instrumentos internacionales de derechos humanos en las sentencias de la Corte Constitucional del Ecuador.

This article examines a jurisprudential thesis repeatedly upheld by the Constitutional Court of Ecuador, according to which international human rights instruments possess “constitutional hierarchy” by being placed on an equal normative standing with the Constitution. The aim is to elucidate whether this thesis entails a normative equivalence in the sense of an absence of material hierarchy, or rather in the sense of an axiological parity. After arguing for the most reasonable interpretation of this thesis, the article identifies its main consequences from the standpoint of constitutional supremacy.