The unexplored dimension of legal certainty in Bolivia: From due process to the constitutional economic order

Abstract

The 2009 Bolivian Constitution includes legal certainty among the principles that articulate a plural economy, a placement that distinguishes it from its traditional procedural function and which has not been addressed in national legal literature. This article critically reviews the normative, jurisprudential, and doctrinal production on this principle, with the aim of analyzing its content in its constitutional economic dimension and establishing the state of normative development of Article 306.III between 2009 and 2025. The review adopted a qualitative documentary approach, supported by the legal dogmatic method and content analysis, on a corpus organized into four strata: normative, jurisprudential, academic, and methodological, selected using explicit inclusion criteria and codified into four analytical categories. The results show that the constitutional jurisdiction recognized two aspects of the principle, one procedural and the other economic, and that only the former received delimited content, identified addressees, and a defined enforceability regime. Law No. 516 on Investment Promotion incorporated the principle into its catalog, reproducing the formula established by jurisprudence for the procedural level, without specifying procedures, responsible parties, or consequences for non-compliance. Autonomous departmental territorial entities exercise exclusive powers over the promotion of private investment without criteria that allow for verifying compliance with the principle or comparing practices between departments. It is concluded that the constitutional economic dimension of legal certainty constitutes a definable, yet unexplored, object of study that can be operationalized at the departmental level.