The Constitutional Court's access to public information

Abstract

According to Law 19/2013, 9th December, art. 2.1 f), The Constitutional Court is subject to the legal provisions regarding the right of access to public information. In this case, this information is limited to “activities subject to administrative law”. The aim of this paper is to analyze, in relation to requests for access to public information addressed to the Constitutional Court, the most relevant and problematic reasons for inadmissibility, as well as the system designed to ensure the exercise of the right of access by citizens. Such system is founded on guarantees meeting the basic principles of immediacy, accessibility, independence, and effectiveness but, as it will be exposed, creates uncertainties. The first issue to be addressed is the difficulty of delimiting the scope of public information subject to administrative law and, therefore, to judicial review. Secondly, the typology of requests for access to public information addressed to the Constitutional Court will be systematically set out as well as the different grounds for inadmissibility invoked. Thirly and finally, we will study the system of guarantees provided, both in administrative and judicial channels, to how the Supreme Court jurisprudence has expanded it and to the uncertainties that arise regarding access to the writ of amparo or before the ECtHR.