The Public Office´s legal Inmunity. Spanish law and Comparative Law

Abstract

The number of aforados has been discussed in recent times in Spain. Most authors, after saying that this procedural exception exists only exceptionably in the Comparative Constitucional Law, request a substantial decrease of its figure in our country. However, this research of Comparative Constitutional Law reveals that the aforamiento is usual in relation to the Head of State and the Government members in the European constitutionalism. By contrast, the parliamentary aforamiento is an exceptional situation. Anyway, the Comparative Constitutional Law, although useful, should not be decisive in order to take decision about the future of this privilege in our country. In this regard, it is absolutely necessary to take into account its objectives and the causational and proportionately relationship between the adopted measure (aforamiento)
and the achievement of those objectives in the political, institutional and social context of the specific country. And the truth is that the arguments to justify this institution, an exception to the principle of equality, are certainly weak.