Discriminatory offenses committed upon the exercise of fundamental rights and public liberties

Abstract

 This paper discusses some issues related to discriminatory offenses committed when fundamental rights are exercised. Legislators have not described these types effectively and, far from delimiting the typical areas with precision, they describe them by profusely using indeterminate juridical concepts whose material content is left to the juridical operators’ interpretation. Besides, some considerations related to the new December 28^th L.O. 1/2004, Integral Protection against Gender Violence Law, are looked at. In these considerations, there appear serious constitutional doubts that may hide a compromise of the equality principle in light of a debatable positive discrimination regarding women’s exclusively reinforced criminal protection due the fact that they are the victims of certain crimes.