Bulletin of the TSJ on arbitrations surprised more of a magistrate

Magistrada Morals, president of TSJ (Gustavo Bandres)

The publication of the official notice of the Supreme Court of Justicia (TSJ) titleholder “consolidates the immunity of Venezuela in front of foreign courts”, surprised more than one of the 31 magistrates of the maximum court and to several of them it displeased to them, because they were not consulted on his content.

“In my trajectory it had never seen that a judge of the country nor of the outside had to issue a writing to explain one or several of his sentences”, she asserted one of the members of the governing organism of the Judicial Power, that did not doubt in describing like a “landmark” the diffusion as the document.

Another magistrada, meanwhile, criticized the bulletin to consider that this one broke with the principle of the present directive: “The sentences are not interpreted, are accepted”, with which it had done against the critics sent from, for example, the National Assembly against the decision of the Constitutional Room that partially annulled the Statutory law of the Public Defense.

Also it remembered that any doubt in relation to an opinion can be cleared by means of requests of clarifying or the revisions.

First of the consulted ones it was wondered why the directive had not issued official notices in other occasions and put as example the happened thing with the sentence of the Constitutional Room that in 2006 reformed article 31 of the Law of the Tax On the Rent.

“To two years of the publication of that failure there are many Venezuelans who do not know for sure how they must declare the tax. Still there are some who wonder themselves if they must include bonds or not”, needed the member the questioned TSJ.

Another consulted magistrate remembered that the Constitution, in its article 155, establishes like obligation that all treaty or international treaty establishes a clause that forces the parts to solve the controversies in agreement with the Right International.

They mix pears with apples the official notice also was criticized by lawyers Pedro Nikken and Adalberto Urbina, ex- president of the Inter-American Court of Human rights and university professor of Public Right the International of the Central University, respectively. Both jurists noticed that the maximum court, its writing, incurred a “conceptual confusion” when equaling to the foreign courts with the international.

Both expert they recognized that the high court is right when indicating that Venezuela cannot be processed by the American courts, Spanish or Cuban, which are foreign, but that was mistaken when affirming that the same happens with the Penal Court the International of The Hague or the Inter-American Court.

“An international court is a jurisdictional organ that has been created to apply or to interpret the Right Public International, by means of a treaty which voluntarily the countries are put under”, it needed Urbina; whereas Nikken ended indicating: “Venezuela cannot escape to the jurisdiction of the international courts whom voluntarily it has been put under when subscribing treaties”.

The professor of the UCV indicated that the official notice does not have any value, because is not a car nor a sentence, and indicated that the unique thing that it does is “to reaffirm the absolutely archaic doctrine of the TSJ according to which the Right International is put under the internal Right”.

In similar terms the ex- president of the Court IDH pronounced itself, that was sorry that the maximum court insists on using the sovereignty and the principle of self-determination to try to not know the international commitments that assumed.

“Invoking the sovereignty to refuse to fulfill resolutions of international courts is untimely, because the sovereign exercise took place at the sovereign moment in which the country was put under the jurisdiction of the court, that is to say, when it subscribed the treaty or it recognized his jurisdiction (...) the TSJ cannot try to apply the Right International. The Right International applies the international courts to it and the TSJ is not it, the TSJ is a national court”, ended.

Juan Francisco Alonso
THE UNIVERSAL ONE