ABSTENTION AND CHALLENGE OF CONSTITUTIONAL JUDGES: ABOUT THE LATEST CHANGES IN THE CONSTITUTIONAL JURISPRUDENCE

The Constitutional Court has been developing jurisprudence on the impartiality of constitutional magistrates, guaranteed through the mechanisms of abstention and challenge, taking into account, among other aspects, the nature of the institution, its composition and the different purpose of the constitutional processes. Some of the general notes that characterize this jurisprudence are the restrictive interpretation of the reasons for abstention and challenge regulated in the Organic Law of the Judiciary, to which the Organic Law of the Constitutional Court refers; the greater rigor to admit the reasons of challenge than those of abstention; or the exclusion of the challenged magistrates from the college that will decide the proposed challenge. The paper examines how some of these general characteristics have been exempted by the Constitutional Court in some of its latest decisions such as Order 177/2022, which rejects a limine the challenge filed against two constitutional magistrates in an amparo process and the Order 28/2023, which deems the abstention raised by a magistrate in an unconstitutionality appeal unjustified.