Más allá del derecho penal: el derecho al acceso a la justicia y el principio de doble instancia judicial

Abstract

The right to appeal a motion includes the possibility of access to two-instance court proceedings, as it is stated in the art. 8. 2. h of the American Convention Human Rights (Pact of San Jose, Costa Rica). It is an uncontestable that the former international provision refers only to criminal proceedings. However, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights had maintained that those procedural guarantees are to be extended to proceedings on tax, administrative, civil and labor matters. Therefore, in this article I will hold that an entrenchment of the right to access to justice necessarily incorporates the right to appeal a motion. Nevertheless, an expansion of the appealing system would entail a tension between promptness and justice within judicial proceedings. Before that issues, this work will articulate a way to reduce those tensions by the means of the ‘reasonableness test’. That solution would secure the basic content of every single right and good involved in the case. In other words, the aim of this article is to secure a right to appeal but harmonizing promptness and justice.