Fundamental Rights and Constitutional Limits and Constraints to the Police Action in the Criminal Procedure: Several Aspects in Some Juslusophony Systems

Without a doubt, criminal proceedings, as the means of putting criminal law into effect, is that branch of Law with the most visible relevance to the drastic restriction of fundamental rights, maxime the right to freedom. Above all, when its principles and basic foundations are studied, it constitutes a true applied constitutional law, as it has become accepted wisdom in the light of H. Henkel.1 It is for this reason, therefore, that the Fundamental Laws which determine the Rule of Law surround the criminal process with an essential group of guarantees, a set of rules and principles that have direct and immediate application and which also constitute impositions and injunctions on the ordinary legislator, in the sense that he is considered to be constitutionally bound to erect a system of criminal procedural law in conformity with the model and the values shaped. In the case of Cabo Verde and Portugal, for example, what has come to be considered a more or less fully developed criminal procedural constitution presents guarantees of an order adequate for those values to be put into effect, naturally translated and developed in the respective ordinary legislation on criminal procedure, without forgetting that of Macau, approved and implemented prior to 1999, still within the framework of the validity of the Portuguese Constitution (partly, and by means of reception) (cf., for all, Canas 1987) and of the EOM.