About the ruling of the Constitutional Court

nurnobisorker44

At the beginning of the afternoon of the Constitutional Court published a press release containing the operative part of the Judgment that resolves the unconstitutionality appeal filed by the Vox Deputies against Royal Decree of March 14 , which declared the state of alarm for the first time. As its name indicates, it was a Decree, susceptible in principle to being appealed only before the contentious-administrative jurisdiction, but the extension of the same that was authorized by the Congress of Deputies gave this Decree the force of law and that explains why it was challenged before the Constitutional Court, because the provision is equivalent to a Law. We cannot go into the depths of the debate behind this Sentence because we do not know it, it has not been published.

Given the expectation that it caused in public opinion, the Court, in a press release, has advanced the operative part of the Judgment, which is the end of it, which indicates whether the precepts included in the unconstitutionality appeal are or not unconstitutional. That's all. According to the statement, the Court has Guatemala Mobile Number List declared three sections of article 7 and one section of article 10 unconstitutional. Nothing more. We also know that four Judges (two conservative and two progressive) have formulated dissenting opinions, that is, they disagree with the Sentence and the ruling. If we go to read the appealed precepts we discover that they are those that: established freedom of movement for the exercise of permitted activities, authorized the Minister of the Interior to cut off or limit circulation on certain roads and authorized the Minister of Health to modify the limitations on commercial and hospitality activities established by the Decree itself.




Before entering into the dogmatic problem, I would like to make two comments. Firstly, this Sentence is, as Manuel Jiménez de Parga, Professor of Constitutional Law and in his time President of the Court, said, a Platonic Sentence , because it has no practical effects since the appealed Decree has lost validity. It serves to establish constitutional doctrine, but not to desolate a normative provision from the order, because it no longer applies. Another Court would have resolved quickly, but the Constitutional Court has suffered from the evil of delay since its constitution and is incapable of resolving with the speed required by the guarantees and rights that are at stake. Secondly, some journalistic commentary has indicated that the sanctions imposed for violating the confinement will be null and void.