The Constitutional Court (TC) this Wednesday elected three new judges to replace the current president, João Caupers, vice president Pedro Machete and court adviser Lino Ribeiro, who have already served their nine-year term.
The three will now be replaced by Carlos Luís Medeiros Carvalho, Advisor Judge of the Supreme Administrative Court, João Carlos Simões Gonçalves Loureiro, Professor at the Faculty of Law of the University of Coimbra, and Rui Rodrigo Firmino Guerra da Fonseca, Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law of the University of Lisbon, were the chosen names. The new judges will be sworn in by the President of the Republic on April 25, and the new president must be elected at the first meeting of the TC after taking office.
The three names were co-opted by the advisory judges elected by the Assembly of the Republic, at the end of a selection process that proved to be tedious. In May last year, criminal justice professor António Almeida Costa was “failed” because he did not receive the necessary votes – according to the Constitutional Court’s organic law, “the candidate who obtains a minimum of seven votes is considered nominated”. The nomination was shrouded in controversy, after the DN revealed the radical anti-abortion views of António Almeida Costa in the past. Following the news, the Associação Portuguesa de Mulheres Juristas addressed an open letter to the president of the TC, expressing “great bewilderment” at the choice, a concern that was shared by other movements and led to the call for demonstrations by feminist collectives. At the time, the TC only said that the co-option process would resume later.
The TC consists of 13 judges, 10 appointed by the Assembly of the Republic and three co-opted by them. The delay in the co-option of these three names even led to remarks from the President of the Republicwho in March, at the conference commemorating the 40th anniversary of the TC, and speaking of the difficulties faced by the Court, pointed as an example to the “system of appointment of judges-advisers, its vicissitudes, its waiting time”.
the new judges
Carlos Carvalho, 66 years old, has a law degree from the University of Lisbon. Since 2014, he has been a judge-judge at the Supreme Administrative Court. João Carlos Gonçalves Loureiro graduated from the University of Coimbra in 1985 and obtained his PhD in 2004. Health law is one of his main areas of research. Rui Guerra da Fonseca graduated in 1998 and obtained his PhD in 2011 in legal and political sciences. He is an associate professor at the Faculty of Law of the University of Lisbon.
Should the president of the republic raise the issue of inspection of the constitutionality of the latest version of the euthanasia diploma – which is due to go to Belém early next week – it will be for the new judges to assess the matter.
Source: DN
