Some important laws for the Government depend on the TC, such as Education or Euthanasia The next renewal will mean a progressive majority in the court of guarantees The magistrates of the TC, who are not just judges, analyze the laws to see if they conform to the Constitution The Government has not Hiding his interest in the Constitutional Court being renewed as soon as possible, since this renewal will mean a shift in the balance of sensitivities of the magistrates and will configure a progressive majority. In fact, after having the main function of the CGPJ -appointing judges- vetoed while it was in office, in July it reformed that veto so that the Council of the Judicial Power could appoint those of the Constitutional and only them. But, why is it so important for the Executive? And not only that, why is the PP in no hurry? The answer is simple, because the future of many laws approved by the Government depends on that court. The mission of the TC is none other than to review that the decisions of other courts, and often of the Administration, are in accordance with the Magna Carta. There, we find the concept of interpretation. The job of these 12 magistrates is to interpret the Law, and the Law can be interpreted in very different ways and for different reasons, also depending on the sensitivity of the magistrate in question, whether he is progressive or conservative. In the work of the court of guarantees there is an important technical part. Those who have passed through it remember that the blocs are not set in stone and that progressives often vote conservative and vice versa. But the political parties are clear that ideology matters and aware of this, they go to the Constitutional Court to throw down every law of the government in power that they do not like. That is, as if it were a third parliamentary chamber to appeal to when they have failed to stop regulations, or reform them, in Congress and in the Senate. Sometimes they succeed, sometimes they don’t, and others remain in limbo, such as the PP appeal against the abortion law, presented 12 years ago and that after passing through the hands of a progressive magistrate -Elisa Pérez Vera- and another conservative -Andrés Ollero- has not achieved an agreement between the magistrates who have been passing through the Constitutional Court in these years. The progressive Pérez Vera endorsed the law, but she knew that many of her colleagues were not going to endorse her sentence and she did not take it to plenary session. But Ollero, a conservative, made one against the norm, and he did not carry it either because he knew that he was not going to obtain a majority. Total, that’s still there, waiting for Enrique Arnaldo, scourge of the abortion law with his articles, on his day, to issue a difficult sentence and even more so if the Constitutional has a majority of progressives. Vox, at the head of resources In recent times, Vox has led the battle in the TC, with resources against practically everything that the Government has approved. Among the latest, a few days ago, he presented one against the equal treatment law and another against the law that penalizes harassment of women who go to clinics to have an abortion. Many of the dozens of Vox resources are awaiting admission, but the truth is that those of Abascal scored a political victory when the Constitutional overthrew the State of Alarm. They only accepted a small part, that the state of alarm should not have been used to confine the population, but that the state of exception should have been used. But with the sentence, the state of alarm and the fines imposed by virtue of it declined, that is, the TC annulled the decrees that Parliament had agreed to. The sentence is signed by Pedro González Trevijano, current president of the TC considered conservative. But it is true that his presentation was supported by some progressive colleagues. Others assure that the state of alarm could have been looked at from another perspective, taking into account that the state of exception would have been too harsh and did not correspond to the situation. The votes against -and in favor- came from both sectors, which reinforces the idea that in many matters, ideology remains on the sidelines, although in many others it does matter. Vox has exhibited ad nauseam that sentence and the one that came later, accepting his appeal against the decision to “close” Congress. With 52 deputies, the green party has been left alone on different occasions in Parliament, but by dint of allocating resources, sometimes it manages to make its thesis prevail, by way of the Constitutional. The others do it tooWith less intensity than Vox, but also active, the PP is taking some of the great laws of the Government to the court of guarantees, sometimes hand in hand with Vox and also with Cs. In his case, he is awaiting a response to appeals against laws that touch the backbone of Sánchez’s legislative agenda. We are talking about the Euthanasia Law, the Education Law of Isabel Celáa, or the Energy Saving Law, against which the Madrid president Isabel Díaz Ayuso appealed. And it is that this tendency to seek in court what has not been achieved in the votes of the hemicycle is practiced by all. The PSOE has also done it when it was in opposition, as it did against the so-called “Gag Law”, endorsed almost entirely by the plenary session of the TC in 2020, a plenary session, precisely, with a conservative majority. Now that it is in the Government , Sánchez wants a court more similar to what is represented in Parliament and therefore to what the polls say, because the future magistrates are going to have to rule on the laws appealed against and others that in all probability will be, such as the Trans law, approved just a few days ago. And for that very reason, Feijóo likes it the way it is, because the current sensitivity of the court is closer to his postulates than to those of the PSOE. How the members of the Constitutional Court are elected The truth is that we are not just talking about career judges and that its members can also be prosecutors, university professors, public officials and lawyers, the condition being that they be “jurists of recognized prestige”. Its function is not so much to judge as to interpret the Constitution, and in fact, it is not a court integrated into the Judicial Power. In total, the plenary session must be made up of 12 members, called magistrates, who come from four different areas, including the parliamentary chambers, that is, our system gives Parliament a voice when deciding who makes up this court, unlike the rest of the judicial bodies, including the Supreme. The magistrates are appointed for nine years proposed by these bodies: Four at the proposal of Congress by a majority of three fifths. Four at the proposal of the Senate, with a majority of three fifths. Two at the proposal of the Government. Two at the proposal of the General Council of the Judiciary. The four proposed by the Government and the CGPJ are in the same batch and it is precisely the one that now has to be renewed and the one that will mean the turn towards a progressive majority. That yes, although the majority come proposed by political powers, once they accede to the position, the position is incompatible with political positions, or even with the exercise of the judicial and fiscal careers. The magistrates always defend that they study the laws with theoretical perspectives and that their opinions have nothing to do with political ideology. However, the majority ends up being noticed on many occasions -not all-, so after years of a conservative majority, Sánchez hopes that his laws will be reviewed by a court that shares his vision -and therefore endorsed-. And Feijóo, well, that, that he is not in a hurry because the trend changes.