스페인 대법원

Abstract

This paper aims at analyzing the structure and status of Spanish Supreme Court, within the context of a comparative study on Spanish Judiciary System in general, because Korean society has been recently engaged in a profound discussion regarding how to conduct the current judicial reform. The major characteristic of Spanish Juridiary System consists in its decentralized model. It means that, unlike Korea, where all the core functions of a Judiciary, such as administracion, judgement, supervision and budgeting, are concentrated in the same Supreme Court, judiciary functions of Spain are shared by General Council of Judiciary (Consejo General de Poder Judicial), Supreme Court (Tribunal Supremo) and Ministry of Justice (Ministerio de Justicia). Another point is that, despite its status as a constitutional monarchy, Spain is a state with highly developed regional autonomy system, represented by its 17 Autonomous Communities (Comunidades Autónoma), with their own Superior Court of Justice (Tribunal Superior de Justicia) in each Community. Constitutional justice is being administered by Spanish Constitutional Court, created by Constitution of 1978, while the Supreme Court, with some 80 judges, is in charge of purely judgement function. The judges are designated by King of Spain, on the the basis of proposals made by the General Council of Judiciary, and the Supreme Court is devided into 5 Chambers, such as, Civil, Criminal,Administrative, Social and Military Chambers. The Supreme Court of Spain has a great similitude with the Court of Cassation, the highest court of France, in exercising its functions as the top court in charge of reviewing the Cassation Appeals (Recursos de Casción).