Search

This paper analyses the current status of the different electoral reforms which have been promoted in various regional legal systems after the autonomous elections of 2015. The results of these elections have led to a deeply fragmented political scenario and, largely, debtor of the commitment undertaken by the political parties with the citizenship to make effective the adequate electoral reforms that would guarantee, inter alia, a more equal and fair electoral system. Various standard-setting instruments are analysed and contextualised, as well as the alternative options on which the need for a concrete legal reform rely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is an analysis of previous unconstitutional appeal, reintroduced as the Spanish Constitutional Court attribution decades after it was repealed, although now restricted exclusively to draft Statutes of autonomy or amendments thereto. The main reason for its restoration (the referendum of the Statutes approved by way of art. 151); indistinction of the Statutes of autonomy as an object thereof; maintain consistency of its optional character and not turn it into an imperative procedure; non-extendible deadline for sentencing; and relative skepticism that the previous unconstitutional appeal serves to achieve what is assumed that the legislature pursues the same time, it is the essential aspects addressed in the work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work provides an overwiew on the Spanish literature published on the new Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia. Special focus is placed on studies on Public Law [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author states some of the introductory texts of legal documents relating to Regional Political divisions in the Franco's Spain and the postfrancoism in order to show its political importance, drawing the attention about its political significance and the legal value ascribed to the non existence of Preamble in the Law of Political Reform and to the Preamble in the Constitution of 1978, to show the outstanding aspects of the terms in which the debate has been developed about the legal value of the Preambles in recent years, according to the intention of offering interpretative instruments to understand and to criticize the Sentence of the Spanish Constitutional Court 31/2010, June, 28th, FJ 7. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When we are present at the 32nd. Anniversary of the Constitution, can be said that, on one hand, our constitution is no more a normative constitution, but a nominal constitution, with the terrible threat that it could become purely a semantic constitution, and, on the other hand, it's evident that it is not fulfilled in the whole territory and that it presents various problems, partly because the past of time. It is necessary to include new fundamental rights, to give a more adequate regulation to some of them, to modify some aspects of the electoral system and of the parliamentary organization, to modernize the succession to the crown, to enforce the unitary judicial power, and, specially, it's necessary to finish the design of the territorial organization of the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effects of STC 31/2010 are approached mainly by means of the study of the general effects of the sentences of the Constitutional Court. Within the conclusions it has been of particular importance to take into account that the Statute of Autonomy is a head-norm of an own normative system, so that the nullity as well as the interpretation in conformity with the Constitution of its provisions implies a mandate susceptible of being examined as a specific binding effect of the sentences of the Constitutional Court. In this sense, it is capable to cause consequences for identical provisions of other legal norms that are in a relationship of dependence on and of hierarchical inferiority with those provisions of the Statute of Autonomy declared unconstitutional. Besides, the findings of the sentence may have even interpretive character for similar or identical provisions of the Statutes of other Autonomous Communities. Thus the consequences of the sentence are notably of interpretative character for other legal provisions; however, a direct enforcement would apply to the provisions of another legal norm declared unconstitutional due to the lack of conformity with the Constitution deriving from the main proceedings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The inclusion of the Councils of Justice in the «second generation» Statutes of Autonomy responds to one of the most important demands that the Autonomous Communities are doing on matter of justice as a means to bring it to the decentralized structure of the State at its highest stage of evolution, because of the the inability of the system for constitutional reform and the absence of a response in the successive reforms of the organic law. The model embodied in the Catalonian and Andalusian Statutes was characterized by creating, with reference to the organic law, a state organ subordinate to the General Council of the Judiciary, as a decentralized body, also fulfilling articulation functions of the competencies of the Autonomous Community on «administration of the Administration of justice». This model has been very controversial in the literature as regards its compliance with the constitutional framework and, finally, declared unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court, with a decision that has serious contradictions, in the Judgement 31/2010 about the Statue of Catalonia. This paper analyzes the status quaestionis of this matter in an evolutionary perspective of the autonomous State and critically examines the doctrine established in this Judgement by the Constitutional Court, proposing as a possible solution to the created situation, the reform of the Organic Law of the Judicial Power in the same direction and size covered by the statutory reforms and the lines put in the deceased Draft Law amending the Organic Law 6 / 1985, July 1, of the the Judicial Power, on justice of proximity and Justice Councils, approved by the Council of Ministers on December 23, 2005. Such reform, combining the functions now fulfilled by the Boards of Governance of the Superior Courts of Justice with others related to the field of competences of the Autonomous Communities, would allow, in addition to a closer proximity to the social reality of justice, a higher degree of integration and coordination between the two levels of government in this area, thus highlighting the statehood of the government's judicial branch referred to an overall conception of the State and helping to strengthen the unity of the Judiciary in a state that possesses a federal logic and rationality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]