Las penas de los delitos sexuales y la revisión de las condenas firmes tras la Ley del “sólo el sí es sí”: un debate jurídico-penalmente necesario tras la Sentencia 523/2023 del Tribunal Supremo

Following the 2022 reform, the unification of sexual abuse and assault into a single criminal offense, as well as the definition of the new crime of rape, entails a reduction in the abstract punitive frameworks for these offenses (whether from the perspective of the upper limit (sexual assault) or the lower limit (rape), which apparently implies the presence of a more favorable criminal norm and, therefore, its retroactive application. From this perspective, the work now presented takes a critical look at the automatic review of sentences for sexual offenses imposed following Judgment 523/2023 of the Supreme Court, in view of how the Supreme Court itself has traditionally interpreted the principle of retroactivity, as well as in view of the difficulties in reconciling this automatic review with the principle of proportionality