The reform of Justice in Spain aims to the right of citizens to judicial services to be expeditious, transparent and consistent with the values proclaimed in the Constitution. The legal text of the reform is "Ley 13/2009, de 3 de noviembre, de reforma de la legislacion procesal para la implantacion de la nueva Oficina judicial". It came into force last Tuesday, the 4th in May.
Through this reform, Judges are intended to work just to judge and to execute judgments, as our Constitution proclaims, downloading all other functions that are currently developing the Courts, and which are not strictly judicial in other officers working in Courts.
This objective entails the creation of a new work system, with the introduction of the new judicial office and adaptation to the same of the procedural laws, which provide support to the judicial function.
Thus, judicial clerks will be developing work on certain materials which are necessary in the judicial procedure but that are outside the scope of judicial authority.
The procedural law reform primary aims to regulate the distribution of powers between judges and clerks. Therefore, the initiation and conduct of the proceedings until the issuance of the ruling, except for certain cases that would be studied by the Judge, is attributed to the Clerk.
For its part, the execution of the Court Decission, except those aspects that are reserved to the judge, is also attributed to the Clerk.
A complementary objective of the reform is the strengthening of the guarantees of the citizens, to this respect, the recording of all hearings and trials has been extended to both labor and criminal procedures, which just used to be for the civil order before.
Another complementary objective is to facilitate the accumulation of processes and executions, in order to avoid multiplicity of proceedings where different processes have the same object, with the pertinent economic and personal wear that are involved in these unnecessary delays.
Another important procedural reform is about the Monitorio process (abbreviated), which will be applicable now for due and documented debts up to a hundred and fifty thousand Euros. This will mean that the declaratory process, adversarial, lengthy and expensive will be avoided in many occasions.
By Jesus and Maria L de Castro
.JPG)
"Zahara de los Atunes (Cadiz) on the left side of the picture", by Luis Lopez-Cortijo
.jpg)