The Constitutional Court has decided to step on the gas pedal to dictate the most important sentences that have been pending for years before the summer. The abortion law will be announced on May 9, and with it the court will complete a first cycle of resolutions that have led to the approval of some of the most important abortion laws in a quarter – between January and April this year. the legislature. These include the educational reform of the Celáa Law and the Euthanasia Law. The one on voluntary abortion has again been reformulated in the last two months to ensure its consistency with the new legislation in force in this regard. The court has also supported important social measures, which PP and/or Vox have appealed, depending on the case. These include the decree-law that put paternity leave on an equal footing with maternity leave, or the law that banned forced evictions during the state of alert against the pandemic in 2020 and 2021.
The new progressive majority of the guarantor body acted as one on all these matters, with some deviations in certain cases. But in general they have done so in a way that shows both the reasons the PP had for its fierce opposition to the renewal of the constitutional law, and the reasons the PSOE had to refrain from the constitutionally envisaged change of four judges to exist, which should have ceased in June 2022, but their mandate was extended until last January. With the squadrons, the court has seven judges from the progressive sector and four from the conservative block. Some convergence has been possible on some matters, although the general dynamics of the Court lead to the usual verification of the existence of two groups, which translate into legal alternatives to the respective ideological tendencies they embody.
This was reflected in the first months of the new phase of the renewed court in the first trial and error between both sectors. The progressive majority has united against the first offensive, the main aim of which was to make it more difficult, if not impossible, for the Constitutional Court to rule on the abortion law. However, the court rejected all of them and even prevented Judge Concepción Espejel from not attending the deliberation of the appeal against the law on voluntary abortion, filed by the PP in 2010.
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The reason for the abstention was Espejel’s possible lack of semblance of impartiality as he had criticized this project as a member of the judiciary. The Conservative judges were in favor of admitting this abstention, but the progressive majority rejected it, believing that Espejel’s opinions, published 12 years ago in non-binding reports and never formalized, were insufficient grounds to dismiss them excluded from counseling. Judges Juan Carlos Campo and Laura Díez, on the other hand, have abstained, without opposition from the court, in cases involving laws or legislative decrees that they were directly involved in drafting. Campo did so in the ruling on the Celáa Law and Díez in relation to the Catalan language regulations, which he supported in official reports and which were challenged in the Constitutional Court for not complying with the rulings, the 25% Spanish in the country imposed educational system in Catalonia.
There were also dissenting votes given the rulings related to the Celáa Law or the Euthanasia Law, but they were not always presented en bloc by the conservative judges. In the first case, the four members of this group voted against, in the second only two, Enrique Arnaldo and Concepción Espejel. In the ruling on the Celáa Law, however, the court affirmed that the constitution does not prescribe percentages for language use in the education system. In this matter, the court also rejected the Amparo request of a company that requested the translation into Spanish of a judgment written in Catalan by the Supreme Court of the Balearic Islands, since this party only questioned an enforcement order issued judgment without having previously been in the proceedings of the to have objected to the use of this language.
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The Guarantor is already preparing, for a second stage, a new list of judgments on other important pending appeals, such as those related to the legislative reform that left the General Council of the Judiciary with the power of appointment during its tenure. or those brought against the oaths of numerous members of parliament from minority groups, whose members accepted their parliamentary positions without strict adherence to the constitution with various alternative expressions. The verdict on the loss of the seat of Podemos MP Alberto Rodríguez, who was fined for kicking a police officer at a demonstration that took place in La Laguna (Tenerife) in 2014, will also be known before the summer.
Based on previous contacts between judges, court sources believe it is highly likely that the Constitutional Court will support the judiciary’s ban on these appointments and protect former MP Alberto Rodríguez, since the loss of his seat implied a clear lack of proportionality between his behavior and those derived from it consequences. It is estimated in said media that the issue of the oaths taken by minority groups MPs will be hotly debated, but that nothing in the announced verdict will question the legitimacy of their access to parliamentary posts.
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