Diálogo entre municipios y estados: principio de fuente constitucional
States and municipalities are two actors of our constitutional federalism, both with a peculiar relationship of attachment in important decision whereas both holding, at the same time, spaces of autonomy protected by the Constitution; thus, state legislatures have power over the taxing power and the integration of municipalities, which, if misused, would certainly derail the design of power fragmentation foreseen by our founding fathers; this paper explores a body of precedents built by the Supreme Court justifying a constitutional judicial review over these political decisions, which consists of different standards of judicial scrutiny by which to evaluate not the content of what is decided, but the processes of decision making and its assumptions; thus, the model is not to have a judicial power ruling on the merits of the law resulting from their normative relationship, but preoccupied by the openness of political channels, which give rise to those decisions.
 Jueces y política: de la subordinación a la dialéctica
Las relaciones entre jueces y política pueden analizarse desde numerosos puntos de vista. Dado que no es posible agotar en este texto un campo de argumentos tan complejo, desarrollaré algunas consideraciones teniendo como punto de partida definiciones específicas de los dos términos, “jueces” y “política” que están relacionados con el tema del seminario.
Law as Palimpsest: Conceptualizing Contingency in Judicial Opinions (forthcoming 2009)
Metaphors create conceptualizations, and for decades legal academics have employed metaphors to shape understandings of legal problems. But no metaphor in current use successfully conceptualizes the contingency of judicial opinions and the complexity of the relationship between opinions and precedent. This Article seeks to fill this void by introducing a new metaphor, the palimpsest, into the realm of legal analysis. A palimpsest is a writing surface that can be cleared away for reuse, like a personal blackboard. What distinguishes a palimpsest from other writing surfaces is that its removed contents do not disappear, but remain, obscured yet recoverable: A writing on a palimpsest never goes away. This Article argues that thinking of judicial opinions as being part of a shared, ever-evolving palimpsest underscores the fact that they are ultimately contingent and serves as a reminder of the multiple levels of interconnectedness between them and the cases they cite. Precedents—like the underlayers of a palimpsest—never go away, and they inform and shape the application of opinions in ways far more significant than simply serving as points of reference. A palimpsestic approach to understanding judicial decisionmaking also helps to explain why even the oldest, most reviled cases remain part of our national psyche—like underlayers of a palimpsest, they can never truly disappear, and their continued presence forces us to grapple with their existence. Finally, considering judicial opinions as part of a shared palimpsest reminds us that even the most troubling opinion is ultimately contingent, its application subject to reexamination and revision by future courts and future generations. Just as such an opinion replaces its precedents, it too will one day be replaced, like each of a palimpsest’s layers. 2 Law as Palimpsest [Vol. __:__ Law as Palimpsest: Conceptualizing Contingency in Judicial Opinions