Pallotta on Spanish Constitutional History

Omar Makimov Pallotta, Università degli Studi di Macerata, is publishing Spagna, in Sistemi costituzionali europei (E. Di Salvatore, ed., Giuffrè, Milano, 2021). Here is the abstract.

Italian abstract: Il contributo ha ad oggetto l’esperienza costituzionale spagnola. Si prendono in esame le tappe principali della storia costituzionale del Paese, a partire dall’approvazione della Costituzione di Cadice, passando per la proclamazione della prima e della seconda Repubblica, per finire con il periodo buio del franchismo e la successiva entrata in vigore della Costituzione del 1978, tuttora vigente. Ampio spazio è dedicato alla tutela dei diritti fondamentali (per il tramite del giudizio di amparo ordinario e costituzionale), allo “Stato sociale e democratico di diritto” di cui all’art. 1 Cost., ai problemi legati allo Stato autonomico (compreso il tema delle rivendicazioni indipendentiste catalane), alla forma di governo, con particolare riguardo all’impatto determinato dall’emersione dei c.d. “nuovi partiti” (Podemos, Ciudadanos, Vox), agli istituti di garanzia e, soprattutto, ai rapporti tra Spagna e Unione europea, rispetto ai quali svolge un ruolo di primaria importanza la giurisprudenza del Tribunal Constitucional. 

 

 English abstract: The paper aims at analyzing the entire constitutional experience of Spain. All the key milestones of the Spanish constitutional history are considered, starting from the approval of the Constitution of Cádiz, passing through the first and second Republic, to end up with the dark period of Francoism and the subsequent entry into force of the 1978 Constitution. A large space is dedicated to the protection of fundamental rights (by means of the ordinary and constitutional recurso de amparo), the “Social and democratic State, subject to the rule of law” ex art. 1 of the Constitution, the problems linked to the “Estado autonómico” (included the Catalan independentist claims), the form of government, with special regard to the impact on the latter of the so-called “new parties” (Podemos, Ciudadanos, Vox), the constitutional guarantee bodies and, especially, the relations between Spain and the European Union, often shaped by the case-law of the Tribunal Constitucional.

The full text is not available from SSRN.

Aragoneses on Legal Silences and the Remembrance of Francoism in Spanish Law.

Alfons Aragoneses, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, is publishing Legal Silences and the Remembrance of Francoism in Spanish Law in Law and Memory: Addressing Historical Injustice by Law (U. Belavusau & A. Gliszczyńska-Grabias, eds.; Cambridge University Press, Forthcoming). Here is the abstract.

The political transition during the 1970s that allowed the continuity of Francoist institutions and legal behaviours beyond the transition to democracy also partially explains the Spanish anomaly in the Western European context. The legislator and the drafters of the Constitution decided not to completely erase the precedent Francoist law. They also opted for silence: no condemnations of the dictatorship and no references to the anti-Francoist opposition or the victims of Francoism are to be found. The consequence was what Boaventura de Sousa Santos calls a ‘palimpsest of legal cultures’: the lack of regulation led to the creation of a legal culture combining elements of the old Francoist system and the new democratic one.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

The Constitution of Cadiz

Matthew C. Mirow, Florida International University College of Law, has published Codification and the Constitution of Cádiz in Estudios Jurídicos en Homenaje al Profesor Alejandro Guzmán Brito (Patrício-Ignacio Carajal and Massimo Miglietta, eds.; Edizioni dell’Orso, 2012).

This study seeks to explore the private law side of the Constitution of Cádiz, in particular its use and reference to the legal revolution of codification that was well underway by 1812. By engaging questions of codification and private law, this study explores the relationship between private law and public law at a transformative moment in both areas. In public law, unwritten, ancient constitutions were just beginning to be replaced by written constitutions attempting to limit government and to define individual rights. In private law, centuries of the ius commune tradition were being reorganized and shaped into codes. Thus, an examination of the idea and place of codification in the Constitution of Cádiz should reveal clues about these important changes.

First, this study discusses the placement of Article 258, the constitutional article referring to codes, within the text of the Constitution itself. It then addresses other aspects of the Constitution that point towards codification as a logical outgrowth of the political and legal transformations contemplated by the Constitution. The third topic addressed here is the way Article 258 came into the Constitution through the reports of the debates in the Cortes and what these statements reveal about the perception of codes at the Cortes. This study ends with some concluding comments about the place of the Constitution of Cádiz in the history of Latin American codification.

Download the text from SSRN at the link.