The war for the composition of the court that will rule on the appeals against the amnesty began in the Constitutional Court with a maneuver already perceived with suspicion within the guarantee body. The president, Cándido Conde-Pumpido, assumed the presentation on the abstention of the magistrate and former socialist minister Juan Carlos Campo in the PP’s appeal of unconstitutionality against the amnesty law, in the other fifteen filed by the autonomous communities and in the three questions of unconstitutionality of the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC). These abstentions will be brought to the plenary session that begins on Tuesday.
The first of these resources, called a “header” To be the one who will set the tone for all the others, this corresponds to José María Macías, the former conservative member of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) who has just landed at the court. In accordance with the dynamics followed within the TC under the presidency of Conde-Pumpido, the rapporteur for all incidents related to the appeal of unconstitutionality is the same one who handles the appeal itself, which implies, as sources of the body recall, that It was Macías, not Conde-Pumpido, who should have taken over the presentation on abstentions. This is what happened in last week’s plenary session, in which Judge Ricardo Enríquez, rapporteur on the question of unconstitutionality of the Supreme Court, reported both the admission of the question and the abstention requested by Campo, which was accepted without cracks.
However, This time it wasn’t like that and the president himself assumed the new abstentions requested by the former minister in the rest of the appeals whose withdrawal the magistrate requested. Conde-Pumpido’s movement would not be aimed so much at approving the permanence of the former minister in the Court (it is assumed that, as in the last plenary session, his departure will be accepted), but rather at Conde-Pumpido’s own will permanence in the incidents of recusal that will now have to be addressed in successive plenary sessions, in which Maintaining a progressive majority on the Court is crucialknowing that without Campo, there are eleven members.
The fact is that Conde-Pumpido claims to have closed the incident of Campo’s abstention without the challenges raised in nine of the 16 appeals of unconstitutionality having yet been addressed and that affect Campo, Judge Laura Díez (former senior official of La Moncloa) and himself. Participating in this incident would open the door to others linked to the main appeal of the PP, among which the one that will decide on the recusal of his partner Díez, who in turn would have a voice and vote in that of the president of the body.
The problem is not minor: if in a court of 11 (with Campo absent) where there is still a majority of six progressives against five conservatives, Pumpido and Díez did not participate, this balance of power would be reversed: Five of the judges would be conservative and four progressive, with the risk that both challenges would be accepted and that the same composition would decide on the amnesty. There is of course a quorum: eight members of the court would be enough to decide. Conde-Pumpido cannot consent to this, they comment in the TC.
However, if the president could rule on Diez (with the judge and Campo absent from this plenary session), the balance of power would be 5-5 with the casting vote of Conde-Pumpido, that is, himself.
All this to the detriment of the fact that in the future, once the PP’s appeal of unconstitutionality is admitted and the parties are informed, one of them will not challenge José María Macías, because if that is the case and it is agreed to dismiss him, we would already be talking about a court of eight, enough to decide with a 4-4.
