Principio de legalidad y criterio gramatical como límite a la interpretación de la norma penal

Abstract

The rule of law has given rise to rivers of ink throughout the history of criminal dogma. Currently, authorized sectors refer to a crisis in this principle, which allegedly lost much of its essence and resulting in mere dead letter. This paper deals with the exegesis of the rule of law from a practical perspective, identified in the interpretative activity which is the responsibility of judges and courts and, particularly, in the guidelines of grammatical interpretation of the standard as a top limit of such activity. From an essentially political basis of the rule of law principle, the author examines issues such as the possibility of analogical interpretation, the contributions of legal definitions (increasingly used by policy makers), or the so-called “literal interpretations” in criminal law, without ignoring the interdependence between this issue and constitutional law.