La llengua catalana a la LOPJ: la posició del Tribunal Constitucional

Resum

The Spanish Constitution and the Catalonian Statute of Autonomy often make reference to constitutional laws (yet to be drafted). These laws can only be approved by the Congress of Deputies through a majority impossible to obtain only with the Catalonian representatives. Both the Autonomous government and the Catalonian Parliament were of the opinion that the Constitutional Law of Judicial Power 6/85, dated July 1st, violated the Catalonian Statute of Autonomy. They therefore filed appeals of the law before the Constitutional Tribunal, which issued Ruling 56/90 on March 29th. In this Constitutional Law, Catalan is most specifically referred to in Article 231. According to the author of this paper, this norm does not affect the organization of the courts, but rather regulates the dual official status of the two languages. This raises doubts as to the central government's authority to establish it, as well as to the norm's scope and proper interpretation. On the one hand, Constitutional Tribunal Ruling 56/90 provides that the central government is empowered to make provisions of a normative nature (although the rulings of the Tribunal have been inconsistent in this area). On the other hand, the question of the discrimination against Catalan in favor of Spanish is examined. The argument used in Ruling 56/90 to determine that this discrimination does not exist contradicts the very foundation of the official nature of a language, and is in contradiction with the equality of the official languages pro claimed in the Catalonian Statute of Autonomy. Furthermore, the Constitutional Law considers a knowledge of Catalan only as an «additional mèrit» for filling positions in the judiciary, although the author of the paper believes such knowledge to be essential for practicing in Catalonia. Ruling 56/90 regards the regulation of the conditions for entrance to and promotion within the judiciary as being a function of the central government