2023-06-15 12:50:00
The Contentious Chamber of the Supreme Court has rejected the appeal filed by a Lawyer of the Administration of Justice (LAJ) assigned to the Civil and Criminal Chamber of the Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands against the Agreement of the Permanent Commission of the CGPJ that confirmed the resolution of the president of the TSJ on the communication of sentences.
The high court establishes that it is not up to the LAJ to determine the informative relevance of the sentences, but to the information professionals of the offices, to whom the task has been entrusted, and points out that the Communication Offices of the judicial bodies do not They are “third parties” because they are part of the CGPJ to disseminate the institutional communication entrusted to them by the Organic Law.
In May 2021, the president of the TSJ of the Canary Islands, given the difficulties that the Communications Office was encountering in the Secretariat of the Civil and Criminal Chamber to obtain the decisions of said court, understood that information should be provided on the resolutions of that room because of its interest for public opinion. It issued an agreement whereby the Lawyer of the Administration of Justice of the Civil and Criminal Chamber, unless expressly indicated against the president, once the notification was made, had to send a copy to the Communications Office of all the resolutions issued by the court.
The aforementioned agreement included the obligation of the Office, as the person in charge of data processing, to comply with current regulations and to warn the media about this matter.
That agreement was appealed by the LAJ before the Permanent Commission of the CGPJ, which endorsed the president, and later before the Contentious Chamber of the Supreme Court.
In its appeal, the LAJ identified itself as the main addressee of the disputed agreement and argued that the agreement of the Permanent Commission was null and void since, according to the appellant, the lawyer from the Administration of Justice is responsible for data processing and the Oficina de Comunicación is a third party in relation to said data.
In its sentence, a presentation by President Pablo Lucas, the court indicates that it is not disputed that personal data is processed in the dissemination of the decisions of the Civil and Criminal Chamber of the TSJ, as in those issued by the other jurisdictional bodies. , but adds that the main issue of the dispute is that the principle of publicity of judicial proceedings is imposed, of article 120 of the Constitution, with the exceptions established by law.
It adds that the same article 120 of the Constitution requires that the sentences be motivated and pronounced in a public hearing. For the court, “knowing the arguments on which the ruling rests allows all interested parties and public opinion to verify how justice is administered, which, says article 117 of the Constitution, emanates from the people, to whom sovereignty corresponds of which all the powers of the State bring cause, as stated in its article 1.2”.
The court recalls that it is the Office of Communication of the CGPJ that is responsible for exercising institutional communication functions and that those created in the Supreme Court, National Court and in the Superior Courts of Justice are linked, from which it offers public opinion, through the media, accurate information on relevant court decisions.
For the Chamber, the agreement of the president of the TSJ is part of that function of the Communication Offices, insofar as it requires that all resolutions be made available, except those that the president excludes.
The ruling states that “it does not seem debatable that determining which are the relevant information elements of a judicial resolution is not the task of the Justice Administration Lawyer, but of information professionals who have been entrusted with the task of transferring them to public opinion, nor that for this purpose they have to dispose of judicial resolutions in such a way that it is justified to agree that they be forwarded to them”.
The court recalls that the Communication Offices “are part of the organization that has been endowed with the General Council of the Judiciary” and that the institutional communication entrusted to them by the Organic Law includes the informative dissemination of these resolutions.
For the Chamber, this work of the Offices “has a determining public interest to the extent that public opinion is an essential element of democratic life that the Constitution advocates.”
It is also clear, according to the court, that its compliance does not require reporting through this channel of each and every one of the resolutions issued, but only those that are informationally relevant, whether due to the nature of the dispute, the meaning of the resolution or different circumstances that, “must be insisted, must be appreciated by the information professionals of the Communication Offices, under the direction of the court”.
“We are, therefore, outside the tasks that are typical of the Justice Administration Lawyer and within those corresponding to the Communication Office that is under the direction of the president of the Superior Court of Justice, so that he can issue agreements such as the controversial one”.
In relation to data processing, the ruling explains that the Communication Offices must respect the rights to the protection of personal data and privacy of those affected and those who hold the status of victims.
However, the Chamber adds that fundamental rights are not unlimited, so in each case a weighting of the rights in conflict is required “hence it has been necessary on numerous occasions to establish how far one and the other go when they come into conflict and There is no shortage, quite the contrary, of cases in which, due to the personality or position of the affected party, due to their own prior conduct or due to the significance or transcendence of the facts prosecuted or the judicial response they have received, they must cede the claims of see privacy or confidentiality preserved against those of public knowledge of what happened”.
These same reasons, the sentence adds, “may lead to the exclusion of certain personal data from the minimization or pseudonymization requirements in the treatment aimed at disseminating judicial decisions.”
The ruling rejects the LAJ’s argument that the Office is a third party that can in no way be considered the person in charge of processing personal data.
The court reiterates that the Communication Office is not a third party in the sense established in article 4.10 of Regulation (EU) 2016/679. “On the contrary, it is addressed to a body dependent on the General Council of the Judiciary and functioning at the service of the Superior Court of Justice.”
The judgment explains that the same thing happens with the referral of judgments to the Judicial Documentation Center (CENDOJ) to incorporate them into its database, for this reason “we are not, properly speaking, dealing with an external relationship, but rather with an operation that takes place between the Civil and Criminal Chamber and an instrumental body of the General Council of the Judiciary that has an express legal basis” and that “responds to the satisfaction of essential public interests, such as those related to knowledge by citizens of the reasons that lead to the rulings handed down by that Chamber, in this case, and by the courts, in general”.
#CGPJ #Judicial #News