Last Monday, May 20, all Spanish judges received through their corporate mail a guide against amnesty in which two forms are provided so that magistrates can raise questions of unconstitutionality or prejudicial questions to the Court of Justice of the Union European, a step that would force the application of the law to be suspended. The document is entitled Practical guide for raising questions of unconstitutionality and/or European prejudicial questions about the Amnesty law and has been prepared by the Civic Platform for Judicial Independence, which was created in 2010 with the aim of fighting for the depoliticization of justice and which is made up not only of judges, but also of law professors.
The mail of Spanish judges is managed through the server of the General Council of the Judiciary. There, they receive information from the same council and carry out communications within the framework of their jurisdictional work. The judicial associations to which everyone is registered can also use the mail to disseminate their courses or communications, or even if a judge is encouraged to do so from time to time, judgments that may be considered of interest or relevance are disseminated legal One of the features is that the server allows you to send an email to all the practicing judges in Spain, more than 5,000 in total. The document, of 126 pages, was sent to the mail of the Spanish judges by a judge of the administrative litigation room of the Superior Court of Justice of Castilla-La Mancha who has access to the corporate mail and who is a member of this platform.
Beyond the legitimacy to issue reports on the constitutionality of a rule, several judges question the fact that an entity that is not made up only of judges has used the CGPJ’s corporate email to encourage its opposition to a law. “In more than thirty years of practice as a judge, I had never seen something like this”, complains a magistrate from Barcelona. “This is unprecedented, it is very serious that it is trying to influence a judge. We judges are already able to make our own decisions”, he regrets. Another magistrate also from Barcelona expresses himself in the same sense. “It is intolerable that they try to influence us”, he criticizes.
The anti-amnesty guide sent on Monday is an update of a document they had already circulated in January and which they sent again in March, as the parliamentary procedures for the Amnesty law progressed. Several judges have expressed their displeasure at the fact that the CGPJ has not intervened in the matter to slow down the sending of the document or have reprimanded the senders. The CGPJ, contacted by La Vanguardia, has declined to comment on this matter.
The Platform defends that the document “is simply an aid, a kind of support for the judges who have to apply this law”. In relation to the internal criticism it has raised among some magistrates who have interpreted the sending as an interference, they respond that they have done “what academic, legal, university doctrine does, which are full of forms, models, studies and aid”. They justify that they have fostered a legal debate that runs away from the ideological side. “What we did is done every day. The only thing that happens is that it bothers them that it is about a very specific topic, and instead of attacking the substantive arguments, which would be the legitimate one, they criticize the form. We are a free association, in a country where there is freedom of expression and freedom of thought”, they add. In addition, the entity claims that they have limited themselves to carrying out a study on a rule that seems to them to be unconstitutional. “The Amnesty law cannot be acceptable because it pursues purposes contrary to the Constitution. The pro-independence parties have made it clear that it is a step in achieving independence outside the Constitution because they do not recognize it and because it is a well-known fact that the Government has launched it because it needs votes to remain in the Government . Even if the amnesty had a place in the Constitution, this does not have it because it is the payment to stay in the Government with independenceists who want to put an end to the Spanish Constitution, and the Constitution cannot protect this”, they argue.
