The departure of María Luisa Segoviano raises the vacancies in the High Court to 17
MADRID, 20 Oct. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The retirement of María Luisa Segoviano, president of the Social Chamber of the Supreme Court (TS), exacerbates the collapse of the High Court due to the impossibility of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) to make discretionary appointments in the judicial leadership.
This Thursday, the Official State Gazette (BOE) publishes the agreement of the Permanent Commission of the CGPJ by which the forced retirement of the magistrate is declared for reaching the legally established age this October 20.
Legal sources indicate to Europa Press that with the departure of Segoviano — which adds to the recent retirement of Judge Ricardo Bodas — the Social Chamber continues to shrink, going from nine to eight magistrates. According to the Law of Demarcation and Judicial Plant, the Social Chamber should be composed of a president and 12 magistrates.
The sources consulted specify that the magistrate Rosa María Virolés will be in charge of assuming –in functions– the Presidency of the Social Chamber in substitution of Segoviano, as she is now the longest-serving magistrate in said Chamber.
It should be remembered that this Chamber, together with the Contentious-Administrative Chamber, is the one that has been most affected by the law approved in March 2021 that prohibits the CGPJ from making discretionary appointments while it functions – as it has been since December 2018 before the inability of the parliamentary groups to reach an agreement to renew the governing body of the judges and elect the 20 members that correspond to them–.
In addition, both rooms are the ones that accumulate the majority of the claims made before the Supreme Court due to the effects of the pandemic, from labor to administrative claims. The sources indicate that this has caused an increase in the cases to be resolved just when there are fewer magistrates, which has resulted in a significant traffic jam in both venues.
According to CGPJ sources consulted by this agency, the total number of vacancies in the judicial leadership now reaches 68: 17 of them in the Supreme Court, 30 in the Superior Courts of Justice, 20 in the Provincial Courts and one in the National Court.
A year ago, in October 2021, the Governing Chamber of the Supreme Court approved a report from the Technical Cabinet in which it was warned that the fact of not filling the current vacancies in the High Court would imply that 1,000 fewer sentences would be carried out per year.
The document reviewed the impact of the inability to fill vacancies in each of the five courtrooms. Except in the Criminal Chamber -which the lack of coverage of vacancies did not affect in the immediate future- in the rest of the rooms the situation is defined as very worrying as the places are not filled urgently.
At this juncture, the Supreme Court is waiting for two things: an agreement between the Government and the PP to renew the CGPJ, so that the dynamics of discretionary appointments can be recovered; or that the Constitutional Court rule on whether the aforementioned reform of the Organic Law of the Judiciary (LOPJ) is constitutional or not.
