La predecibilidad de las decisiones judiciales

Abstract

The issue addressed in this study is the predictability of judicial decisions, linked to the values of liberty, the feeling of security it affords people, and equality. The jurisdictional principal guiding judges is to exercise the guarantee of closure of the system by correcting the margins of legal deviation and illegitimacy that might have occurred. From this perspective, I am addressing the framework in which the theory and practice of the predictability of said decisions within a democratic State must be built, and of the concatenate play of the values outlined. In order to analyse the play, I examine the issue of the reasoning informing rulings, legal discretionality, the meanings and elements of legal security and precedents. The treatment given to the predictability of the Law by American Legal Realism, especially by Frank and Llewellyn, is gone into in greater depth. Lastly, I must point out that the changes undergone by the applicative Law model break with the concept of strict formalism, and spaces related to non-legal purposes and strategies are created. Consequently, it may be understood that American Legal Realism was right in regarding the Law as a reality that undergoes unceasing changes, owing to creative legal activity. In this regard, it is made clear that legislators and judges alike play a part in this process. Its creation goes back to the interpretation of the regulation in force and to the fact that the specific regulation on the basis of which the decision is made is not a consequence of logic.