Legal nature and judicial review of the exceptional constitutional decisions

Abstract

The legal nature and the jurisdictional control of decisions concerning the declaration and extension of states of exception are constitutionally important questions that, in the Spanish legal system, have raised doubts because of the diverse way in which said decisions are formalised and the lack of any legal provision concerning the jurisdictional body responsible for overseeing them. In this study, I will analyse the particular characteristics of governmental decrees, authorisations and parliamentary resolutions concerning exceptions, which, in the judgement of most accepted legal principles, prevented their classification under a common legal category. I will then identify both the simple and complex proceedings that comprise decisions concerning exceptions for the purposes of their jurisdictional control. Once I have analysed the theoretical context, I will study the decisions contained in the Supreme Court cases that did not admit appeals against the declaration and extension of the state of alert decreed in 2010, in the Constitutional Court proceedings 7/2012 of 13th January and in the important Constitutional Court decision 83/2016 of 28th April that, taking a minority position that defined all of these proceedings under one single category, systematically characterises the decisions concerning the declaration and extensions of states of alert, exception and siege as statutory acts that were only subject to constitutional control.