Abstract
Art. 7 ECHR and art. 25 of the Spanish Constitution (SC) guarantee the principle of rule of law regarding punishments; a similar wording may be found in art. 49 CFREU. All these norms have been interpreted in the sense of prohibiting the punishment of any offense, or the application of any punishment, in the absence of a prior, written, strict, and precise legal norm. But there is a different interpretation about the sense of the principle of legal certainty into both articles. In the case of Spanish art. 25, the Spanish CC considers that the principle of legal certainty is an objective rule. The strict legal reserve granted in the art. 25 SC contain a mandate to the legislator: the criminal law must be clear and foreseeable in its text and sense. Otherwise, art. 7 ECHR and its interpretation by ECHR its different. The ECHR interpret the norm like a rule about the subjective foreseeable of the criminal consequences of the individual behavior. The important in this cases, is, of the individual could know and foresee the criminal consequences of his behavior. Nevertheless, the Spanish CC has understood that the legal certainty is a mandate to the legislator, not to the judge. The legislator must be reasonable clear in the criminal law when it describes criminal behavior and its punishment. This work analyses both paradigms and their differences and possible relationship.
Former Law Clerk at the Spanish Constitutional Court (1998–2001), Professor of Constitutional Law at Universidad de Oviedo.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
This doctrine is summed up to perfection by Huerta Tocildo (2008), pp. 733–734.
- 3.
Matscher (1993), pp. 322 ff.
- 4.
A painstaking analysis of the ECtHR’s jurisprudence can be found in Murphy (2010), passim.
- 5.
“Law” must be understood in all this text as “Parliamentary or legislative Act”.
- 6.
Huerta Tocildo (2014), pp. 402 ff.
- 7.
- 8.
Murphy (2010), pp. 194 ff.
- 9.
- 10.
- 11.
- 12.
Burgorgue-Larsen (2007), p. 340; ECtHR Judgement of 25 August 1993, c. Chorherr v. Austria, par.25.
- 13.
- 14.
The ECtHR accepted the “evolutive” and “finalist” interpretation of the British courts of the crime of rape, according to which a husband could commit the offense of rape against his wife; despite the fact that at the time the acts took place English criminal law did not contemplate that possibility and actually regarded it as excluded. The same could be said regarding the cases of Judgement of 22 March 2001, c. Streletz, Kessler, and Krenz v. Germany and Judgement of 22 March 2017, c. K.H.W v. Germany, in which, in application of punishing norms of the reunified Germany and international criminal law, three border guards of the extinct Democratic Republic of Germany were convicted of wilful murder, concerning the deaths of various individuals who were attempting to escape to the Federal Republic. As Burgorgue-Larsen (2007), p. 343, wisely pondered when commenting on both cases: “One must not forget that there are close links between such interpretations and the principle of non-retroactivity(…). Every judicial interpretation, every change introduced through case law has necessarily a retroactive aspect. How can one reconcile this with the prohibition of retroactivity of the punishing law enshrined in Article 7?” Murphy (2010), p. 206.
- 15.
Bartole et al. (2001), p. 263.
- 16.
To a certain extent this is the conclusion at which Huerta Tocildo also arrives on considering that the ECtHR replaces the mandate of legal certainty by the criterion of foreseeability in cases where it is not possible to appeal, in the national system of reference, to an absolute legal reservation (Huerta Tocildo (2014), pp. 414–415).
- 17.
The SCC has not hesitated to deny mere custom the condition of a sanctioning or punishing norm, STC 26/1994 of 27 January 1994, FJ 5. Huerta Tocildo (2014), pp. 402 ff.; Burgorgue-Larsen (2007), pp. 337, and criticizes recognition of such established practices as weakening the formal guarantee of the domain of legality, and thus widening to an alarming extent each state’s “margin of appreciation”. Thus the ECtHR has come to regard a wide variety of juridical forms as source of punishment norms, such as military proclamations (ECtHR Judgement of 19 December 1994, c. Vereinigung Demotratischer Soldaten Ósterreichs and Gubi v. Austria,), or mere public statements before the House of Commons (Report of the Commission on Human Rights on Rai, Allmond and Negotiate Now v. United Kingdom of 6 April, 1995).
- 18.
Murphy (2010), p. 207.
- 19.
- 20.
Lascuraín Sánchez (2009), par. 34, III.
- 21.
Lascuraín Sánchez (2009), par. 39, IV.
- 22.
- 23.
- 24.
- 25.
- 26.
Perhaps, in the light of its case law, the SCC might have emitted a different sentence. Not, however, because of the unforeseeability of the conviction for the appellant, but because the referral of the punishing law did nothing to clarify for any citizen what, for punishing effects, should be considered “medicine”. In fact, the Commission in its report on the matter of April 12, 1995, expressed quite the contrary opinion to the judgement handed down subsequently by the ECtHR, stating that the definition of “medicine” lacked “a reasonable degree of foreseeability” (par. 63).
- 27.
Navarro Frías (2010), pp. 20, 27.
- 28.
Ferreres Comella and Mieres (1999), p. 293.
- 29.
Huerta Tocildo (2014), pp. 414–415.
- 30.
- 31.
See Bernardi (2002), pp. 773 ff.
- 32.
- 33.
Scoletta (2010), passim.
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Menéndez, I.V. (2018). A Dialogue Between Courts. The Case-Law of the European Court of Human Rights and the Spanish Constitutional Court on the Principle of Legal Certainty. In: Pérez Manzano, M., Lascuraín Sánchez, J., Mínguez Rosique, M. (eds) Multilevel Protection of the Principle of Legality in Criminal Law. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63865-2_3
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