The hearing of the members of the General Council of Judicial Power before the Spanish parliament

Abstract

This article describes the limits of the duty to inform the Cortes Generales, as specified in article 109 of the Spanish Constitution, when this duty is required of the members of the Consejo General del Poder Judicial. In the first place, this article distinguishes between parliamentarian control, applicable only in respect to executive power, and the duty to inform, which can be required of any public authority, as a direct consequence of the superiority of the chambers. It concludes that this duty contains the duty to appear in the chamber, and that it is also applicable to the members of CGPJ, who do not appear as members of judicial power but as members of an institution chosen by the Parliament that exercise the powers of the government of the judicial power, or rather, political powers. Therefore, they cannot invoke the guarantee of judicial independence in order to avoid this duty. Finally, the article recommends that, even though the duty comes directly from the Spanish Constitution, it should be added to LOPJ with the objective of avoiding ambiguous interpretations that could result in possible future incompliance.