The Attorney General and football justice
It's bad when judicial decisions are interpreted as if they were a football match: conservatives 5, progressives 2. This is how the news reports of the Supreme Court's ruling that disqualifies the Attorney General, Álvaro García Ortiz, for two years are being headlined. And what's worse is that if political interpretations of high court decisions have become commonplace, it's because the signs of politicization of the judiciary persist; some judges even readily identify themselves by their ideological leanings.
In fact, in this case, the political aura surrounding it is not surprising, given that it was a proceeding with no other aim than to use the high court to protect personal interests (in this case, those of Alberto González Amador, the partner of the President of the Community of Madrid). And they have found in the Attorney General the vulnerable point to achieve their objectives. The speed with which the Court issued its ruling—a week after the trial—and the communication of the result before writing and approving the sentence, that is, without the official record of the proceedings, only serve to highlight the politicization of the case. A rush to move on. And the lack, to date, of conclusive evidence underscores the weight of subjectivity in the judges' decision. After all, they are human, burdened like everyone else with prejudices, and although in their duties they should control them as much as possible, this does not prevent them, in both form and deed, from often fostering an image of authoritarianism rather than justice, a result of a certain rivalry between the branches of government. This tendency becomes more visible when the left is in power, due to the predominantly conservative leanings of the magistrates. And with the People's Party (PP) lying in wait to pounce, the sense of confusion among the branches of government only intensifies.
Formalities are increasingly being lost, even though they are essential in justice. There should be no room for ambiguity in either the texts or the gestures. And yet, we are told the what, not the why. The outcome of the deliberation is communicated before the sentence is written, so the accused becomes convicted without knowing the basis for the decision. And thus, immediate political exploitation is permitted without the need for argumentation, as Feijóo has already done relentlessly: Sánchez must give in, now. And, at the same time, the convicted person is put between a rock and a hard place without knowing their reasons. The mobilization of the PP, coinciding with the moment when it has definitively surrendered to the far right, is indicative: it interprets the conviction as an incentive for its battles and uses the law without any scruples.
One tends to think that the function of the Supreme Court, in addition to handing down sentences, is to define a shared frame of reference and transmit a spirit of due process that leaves little room for arbitrariness. In reality, it seems that making the outcome of a trial public is all that matters, especially in a case like this, which could contradict common sense, and where legal opinion is rife with disagreements. The question is: where is the crime? And the answer is: there is a crime, we'll explain later. All of this is a point of frivolity that clashes with the seriousness that should distinguish one of the three main institutions of the State: the Supreme Court. What is it about the justice system that makes it presumably conservative?
