The Ateneo de Madrid is preparing to host, this Saturday, October 19, the presentation of the book ‘Checks and Counterweights: Interferences of Politics in Justice’. The work, coordinated by judges Luis Alfredo de Diego Díez and Jesús Manuel Villegas Fernández, stops to analyze each point of the fine line that separates political power from judicial independence in Spain. A fight of checks and balances where “The Executive power always finds a way to infiltrate and influence justice”.
Its authors understand this work as a “choral work” that, with the collaboration of the Civic Platform for Judicial Independence, was born with the idea of becoming an instrument to stir consciences. As Jesús Manuel Villegas himself describes: “This digital work is not a static work.
It is a call for help to Justice with the aim of create a democratic fire”. The book, made up of a series of essays written by renowned experts – mostly jurists – takes a look at some of the main symptoms of the deterioration of the rule of law in Spain.
The work denounces, among other phenomena, practices such as political control of criminal investigation, the lack of transparency in the appointment of high judicial positions and the arbitrariness in the training of magistrates. Although the interference of political power with Justice has always existed throughout the life of our newly launched democracy, the texts included in this work focus on current issues; show a unidirectional reality where all eyes rest, mainly, “on those who govern us” and the demolition of the Rule of Law.
The British philosopher Aldous Huxley said, in his most recognized work ‘Brave New World’, that “a perfect dictatorship would have the appearance of democracybut it would basically be a prison without walls in which the prisoners would not even dream of escaping…. a system of slavery, in which, thanks to consumption and entertainment, slaves would love servitude.”
Under that premise, the judge of the National Court, Luis Alfredo de Diego, presents in this book (among many other texts) the article ‘Read around’; an essay focused on the amnesty law approved by the Government and which represents “the definitive assault on the Judiciary”, as the author describes. “The PSOE is no longer a political instrument of society to become the instrument of a leader who personally interacts with society,” he says.
‘Lawfare’
According to De Diego, another way for political power to extend its tentacles to the depths of the judicial system is to try to influence judges through a multiple strategy: controlling access to the judicial career, the promotion system, the implementation of disciplinary sanctions or the “misnamed lawfare”. In this regard, the work that will be presented this Saturday at the Ateneo de Madrid, includes several articles signed by renowned jurists such as the magistrate Fernando Portillo or the novelist and playwright Juan Carlos Arcein addition to the two coordinators of the work.
The magistrate explains to Vozpópuli that the ‘lawfare’ It functions as a kind of “collateral control” where “they denounce the figure of the judge, attack the judges and try to introduce into the collective imagination that all judges are right-wing.” On this matter, Jesús Manuel Villegas introduces one of his articles in this work: ‘Lawfare: judicial war’.
The Secretary General of the Civic Platform for Judicial Independence links this “invented word” and publicized by the Sánchez Government with the ‘procés’ and the responsibility of its leaders: “The Catalan process resonates in our ears, this is an annoying matter for saint of which some dare to criticize the Judiciary, simply for complying with the law. “They would prefer that they turn a blind eye without incurring the vice of ‘judicializing politics’…”
revolving doors
Precisely, a tool that generates the opposite effect, ‘politicize justice’is the proliferation of revolving doors. On this matter, Alfredo de Diego writes in his article ‘From the toga to the bench and vice versa’. However, the coordinators share the position that a politician cannot be prohibited from returning to the judicial career; on the contrary, they propose certain alternatives already contemplated by a multitude of jurists; measures that allow limiting the transfer from the political world to the judicial world or, at least, space it out over time.
As a final bracket. The work focuses several of its articles on analyzing one of the most notable milestones of Sánchez’s stay at the Moncloa. The political tools to influence the judiciary analyzed in the work find their culmination in one of the star measures promoted by the coalition government: the amnesty law. The “pact of ignominy”, as described by several of the authors of this book, in exchange for 7 votes
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