El Tribunal Constitucional. De la legitimidad de origen a la legitimidad de ejercicio

Abstract

The Constitutional Court was conceived by the Constitution as an organ to guarantee the Norm with which the political model of the Franco’s regime was trying to excel inaugurating a new political, juridical and social order based on a series of values and democratic and liberal principles. In the adventure of establishing the new model, the Constitutional Court assumed the role of defending the essence of the new order, within a balance between its own competences and those of other power aimed at the development and interpretation of the Constitutional norms. In its twenty-seven years of existence the performance of the Constitutional Court has been assessed both positively and negatively. The evaluations have been mostly referred to precise performances of specific cases. But during the last three or four years the prestige of the organ has been progressively mined up to the point in which criticisms are no longer just referred to specific performances of the institution but they have ended up questioning the very functionality of the organ and hence, its legitimacy. The Constitutional Court’s latest decisions have been considered to be politically biased. Such circumstance lies upon the base of nowadays public debate about the role of the mentioned institution. This circumstance leads us to think about how the precedence of the Court’s members affects the nature of the institution. It also raises the question about the functional and structural causes of the Constitutional Court current loss of prestige, which jeopardizes its role as guarantee of the Democratic State.