The Constitutional Paper on Amnesty: « The legislator’s intentions are not subject to our control » | Spain

The Constitutional estimates that the political pacts to which the impulse given by the Government can respond to The amnesty law They lack relevance for the trial that corresponds to the body of guarantees, which is limited to examine the lace of the norm with the Constitution. This is exposed in the legal foundations of the sentence project that will begin to be examined by the court on the 10th day. « The appellants, » explains the ruling, « expose reiteration that, beyond the words of the Organic Law of Amnesty (LOA), this is the result of simple arbitrariness as soon as it obeys a pure political transaction, between a candidate who needs support for the investiture and the political leaders who committed crimes and now obtain oblivion. » To which the Constitutional responds that his own doctrine « makes such allegation cannot prosper, and this » without being relevant a thorough analysis of all possible motivations of the norm and of all its possible consequences. « 

The Court underlines the importance of this point – to seap the political motivations of a law with its constitutionality analysis – and in this regard cites numerous sentences that it has been dictating over time, including 65/1990, of April 5; 142/1993, of April 22; 212/1996, of December 19, and 242/2004, of December 16. In the light of this doctrine, it emphasizes that by insisting on the issue of political motivations “the recurring alludes to what the State Advocacy considers in its allegations ‘extrajuridic issues’, which, according to repeated doctrine of this court, prevents the reason can, in this concrete point, to prosper”. And because « the legislator’s intentions, his political strategy or his ultimate purpose do not constitute, as is evident, object of our control. »

The sentence project – of which the Vice President of the Court, Immaculate Montalbán, in front of a team of lawyers of the Court – has been speaker – then explains that the context in which “the will of the legislative is illuminated, the reasons why the different political and parliamentary actors lend their support and, therefore, the ‘political opportunity judgments’ remain extramarkets of our control”. This overwhelming statement leads to the presentation to affirm that, therefore, “they must be ruled out ab initior the allegations about the purpose of the law that merge into those arguments. ”

Sitting the previous principles, the text emphasizes that it is thus « unnecessary » to delve into the argument that the declared purpose of the norm is fallacious. Nor does the Constitutional admit that he should notice that « this would have been explicitly admitted by their drivers and by the main representatives of the parliamentary groups that have supported it », despite the fact that the recurring « annoy » to this circumstance « the arbitrariness of the norm for its notoriety. » To rive the reasoning, the draft of the ruling maintains that it must be insisted on the scope of the prosecution of the law by this Court, because “one thing is why the law, that is, of the motivations, reasons or political transactions that led to its approval, and another very different is what the norm is”.