Public Law

In recent times balancing has become a constant feature in legal literature and practice and has spread without respecting the cultural borders that traditionally separate rather diverse legal traditions. Simultaneously, the requirement of proportionality seems to exceed its original scope of application. As for Administrative law, both developments coexist with a growing concern in keeping its directive role as well as with the crisis of the traditional understanding of discretionary powers. Bearing all this in mind, this paper explores the relation between balancing, proportionality and Administrative law.

The Europeanisation of national legal orders of the Member States is a transformation process which has an effect on almost every aspect of law. Nevertheless, the pressure of innovation in terms of EU law on national legal systems is particularly intense in the case of public services, something that may be accounted for by the legal diversity of European national legal traditions concerning public services, as well as on the fact that they are critically positioned both in relation to the internal market and competition law. In this chapter, I shall begin by explaining the traditional position of public services under Spanish general administrative law and analyse the impact that EU law has on it (II). Later, I shall focus on two particular problems in respect of this influence: the relationship between the organisation of public services and EU public procurement law, on the one hand (III), and between their financing and EU state aids law, on the other (IV).

This paper analyzes the grounds, contents and consequences of the first reference for a preliminary ruling of the European Court of Justice made by the Spanish Constitutional Court (Order 86/2011, 9th June), within a constitutional claim lodged by an Italian citizen who had been sentenced in absentia against the execution of an European arrest warrant. The reference concerns the interpretation and the validity of Article 4 of the Framework Decision on the European arrest warrant, as well as the interpretation of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union and its relationship with the Constitutions of the Member States. This paper focus on the consequences of this preliminary reference both on the case-law of the Spanish Constitutional Court relating criminal sentences given in absentia and also on its institutional position and legitimacy.

This article deals with infrastructure planning in Spanish law. It first describes the role of public participation in planning procedures and analyzes the main participatory instruments foreseen in both general and sectoral administrative law. The distance between a rather adequate administrative legislation on participatory instruments and an unsatisfactory administrative practice in terms of promoting citizen’s partici¬pation and seeking acceptance harms the quality of administrative decisions and increases litigation. The article then focuses on the regulation of legal remedies against those decisions and describes recent developments in both academic doctrine and case-law. The main problems related to the effectiveness of judicial protection in this area of law are finally explored.

This paper analyses the judicial implementation of EU law from the perspective of the right to judicial effective protection and to a fair trial as it is recognized by Article 24 of the Spanish Constitution (SC). It suggests a classification of possible violations of the various rules which the Spanish Constitutional Court regards to be enshrined in that provision. Specifically, this study identifies typical violations of the right to a reasoned judgment (Article 24.1 SC), the right to a judgment founded in law (Article 24.1 SC) and the right to a fair trial (Article 24.2 SC) committed by national courts in interpreting and applying EU law.

Administrative law governs the allocation of limited rights by the public administration in very different areas: licensing, contracts, subsidies, public services, etc. All these administrative procedures are subject to their own sectoral legislation. However, the regulation of both these rights and their administrative allocation gives raise to common regulatory problems for which the law usually provides similar responses. The reason for that is probably connected with the fact that those administrative decisions have a similar structure and are bounded by the same constitutional requirements. It is, therefore, necessary to analyze the administrative allocation of scarce rights as a part of general administrative law, just as it begins to happen in European and comparative administrative law. In this paper I first approach this administrative activity from both an analytical and constitutional approach. Later, I focus on its structure and specifically on the administrative procedure, the allocation decision and the judicial protection.

El Derecho de la Unión Europea y el Derecho interno son sistemas jurídicos abiertos. Cada uno de ellos incorpora elementos procedentes del otro a través de sus propios dispositivos de comunicación intersistemática. Los Tribunales encargados de diseñar esas interfaces deben afrontar esa tarea con la necesaria consideración de las exigencias institucionales propias, pero también de las ajenas. En esta obra se desarrolla esta idea a propósito de tres de las cuestiones sobre las que gira la más reciente evolución de la doctrina del Tribunal Constitucional: las relaciones entre los sistemas europeo y nacional de protección de los derechos fundamentales, la relevancia constitucional interna de la aplicación incorrecta del Derecho de la Unión y, en fin, el papel que este último puede jugar a la hora de justificar y apreciar la especial trascendencia constitucional de los recursos de amparo.

El objeto de este trabajo es el régimen jurídico aplicable a la gestión por medios electrónicos de los procedimientos de elaboración de normas administrativas en los Estados Unidos y en España. En él se explora, primero, cómo se ha extendido el uso de las nuevas tecnologías de la información y comunicación en el desarrollo de los procedimientos normativos de las agencias federales, así como los principales problemas y líneas de reforma actualmente en curso. El estudio se centra después en la participación electrónica en el procedimiento de elaboración de normas administrativas en España, cuyo régimen jurídico ha sufrido recientemente una importante evolución. La comparación de ambos regímenes permite obtener conclusiones de interés, especialmente para la mejora del segundo.

Este trabajo tiene por objeto el recurso de amparo ante el Tribunal Constitucional español. En él se analiza, por un lado, el régimen jurídico y la aplicación práctica del requisito de admisión relativo a la especial trascendencia constitucional de la demanda. Por otro lado, también se estudian las consecuencias de su prevision normativa en la función de protección de los derechos fundamentales que corresponde al Tribunal Constitucional y a los órganos integrantes del Poder Judicial.