The Role of the Spanish Constitutional Court in the Judicial Review of Parliamentary Legislation

Abstract

This article considers the main procedures established in the Spanish Constitution to carry out the Judicial (Constitutional) Review of Parliamentary Legislation. After briefly describing the institutional role and the organization of the Spanish Constitutional Court, the paper deals with the two main procedures for the review of parliamentary legislation: the appeal of unconstitutionality (a politically rooted procedure) and the questioning of unconstitutionality (that unlike the appeal is a judicially rooted procedure and represents a middle way of judicial review between the American-US Model and the European Model). Each procedure is critically analysed taking into account four different elements: the plaintiffs or applicants, the challengeable legislation, the model used as legal basis for the constitutional scrutiny, and the development of the procedure as such. The article finishes with a concluding section about the main effects of the Decisions of the Constitutional Court in these judicial review procedures.