Revista d'Estudis Autonòmics i Federals (Apr 2014)
COMPETÈNCIES AUTONÒMIQUES EN MATÈRIA DE JUSTÍCIA: ESTAT DE LA QÜESTIÓ
Abstract
This article examines the powers over the judiciary held by the autonomous communities by analyzing the legal and case-law evolution on the matter, as well as the current situation. Although the Spanish Constitution conferred Central Government with exclusive powers over the judiciary and administering of justice, the autonomous communities, by means of their charts (statutes of autonomy), assumed some minor powers. In 1990, the Spain’s Constitutional Court solved this apparent contradiction by establishing a difference between the judiciary and administering of justice strictly speaking, reserved exclusively to Central Government, and the administrative support required to implement it (staff and material resources), on which the autonomous communities were allowed to hold limited powers, as they did. The 2006 Statute of autonomy of Catalonia attempted to overcome such limitation, although expressively manifesting subjection to the Spanish constitutional law on the Judiciary. Actually,the strictness to this subjection was the principal reasoning the Constitutional Court argued in its 2010 ruling of about the 2006 Statute of autonomy of Catalonia (Ruling 31/2010) to reject the unconstitutionality of these sections of the Statute which aimed at attributing greater powers to Catalonia on the matter. Even more, some recent rulings by the Constitutional Court dismissed the new sections of the Statute that were left after the 2010 ruling. Therefore, the autonomous communities could only have greater powers on the matter by means of a reform of the Spanish constitutional law on the Judiciary, and, from a broader perspective, of a constitutional reform which would change the present unitary structure of judiciary system.
