L'ús del català a l'Administració de Justícia. Comentari a la STC 56/1990, de 29 de març

Resum

Ruling 56/1990 of the Constitutional Tribunal, dated March 29, decides the appeals filed by the Catalan Government against Constitutional Law on Judicial Power 6/1985 and its regulation of the use of the different official languages in the judiciary. In spite of the great mobility of civil servants the reform entails, this Law considers the knowledge of the Catalan language and legal system only as an additional merit in filling positions in the judiciary. After dealing with the unclear concept of the official nature of a language and with how the Constitutional Tribunal has delimited its scope in sometimes contradictory fashion, the author takes up the problematic aspects of Constitutional Tribunal Ruling 56/1990. In the first place, the Ruling deals with who has the power to regulate the use of an autonomous community's native language in the judiciary. As a result of the rather blurred division of powers, the Constitutional Tribunal regards both central government regulation and autonomous community regulation as valid in this area. Secondly, the treatment accorded the different official languages in article 231 of Constitutional Law 6/1985, which mandates only the use of Spanish and relegates the autonomous language to a mere possibility of use, does not respect the equality set forth in the Constitution. The Constitutional Tribunal views this supremacy of Spanish as correct, citing the fragile argument that the right not to be denied due process is linked to the obligation of knowing Spanish, a criterion which the Constitutional Tribunal itself does not follow in all its rulings.