The chilling effect doctrine as a connection point between Criminal Law and fundamental rights

Abstract

A criminal norm may discourage the exercise of a fundamental right when it is disproportionately applied to conduct bordering on the legitimate exercise of that right. The purpose of this paper is to analyse this effect that criminal norms can produce, known as "chilling effect", taking as an example the events that occurred on 20 September 2017 before the Ministry of Economy of the Catalan Government.