The Supreme Justice Tribunal ( or TSJ) is the highest court of law in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and is the head of the judicial branch. As the independence of the Venezuelan judiciary under the regime of Nicolás Maduro is questioned, there have recently been many disputes as to whether this court is legitimate.
The Supreme Tribunal may meet either in specialized chambers (of which there are six: constitutional, political/administrative, electoral, civil, criminal, and social) or in plenary session. Each chamber has five judges, except the constitutional, which has seven. Its main function is to control, according to the constitution and related laws, the constitutionality and legality of public acts.
The Supreme Tribunal's 32 magistrates (magistrados) are appointed by the National Assembly and serve non-renewable 12-year terms. Appointments are made by a two-thirds majority, or a simple majority if efforts to appoint a judge fail three times in a row. Under article 265 of the 1999 Constitution, judges may be removed by a two-thirds majority of the National Assembly, if the Attorney General, Comptroller General, and Human Rights Ombudsperson have previously agreed to a "serious failure" and suspended the judge accordingly.
History and controversies The Tribunal was created under the 1999 Constitution of Venezuela, replacing the Supreme Court of Venezuela. For some years provisional statutes regulated the number of judges – initially 20, with three in each chamber except the constitutional, which had five – and their selection. The statutes were replaced in 2004 by an organic law (a law required to clarify constitutional provisions). The law also permitted the National Assembly to revoke the appointment of a judge, by a simple majority, where a judge had provided false information as to their credentials.
2002 coup d'état In a controversial sentence, on 14 August 2002, after the 2002 Venezuela coup d'état, the Supreme Tribunal acquitted Division Generals Efraín Vásquez (Army) and Pedro Pereira (Aviation), Vice-admirant Héctor Ramírez and Counter admiral Daniel Comisso in a rebellion trial. According to the sentence, "con los pronunciamientos efectuados en abril, los altos oficiales acusados no desconocieron al Gobierno, sino la orden dictada por el presidente de la República de aplicar el Plan Ávila, porque resultaba contraria a la protección de los derechos humanos de la ciudadanía y ello significaría una masacre".TSJ allanó camino para enjuiciar al presidente Hugo Chávez El Universal. 15.08.2002(With the pronouncements made in April, the accused high-ranking officials did not ignore the Government, but the order issued by the President of the Republic to apply the Avila Plan, because it was contrary to the protection of the human rights of citizens and this would mean a massacre.)
The sentence argued that there was a "power vacuum" after the Military High Command chief, General Lucas Rincón announced that Chávez had resigned from office. The discontent of the Venezuelan government was considerable; Chávez condemned the sentenced, stating "Esos once magistrados no tienen moral para tomar ningún otro tipo de decisión, son unos inmorales y deberían publicar un libro con sus rostros para que el pueblo los conozca. Pusieron la plasta".anuncia una marcha contra el fallo del Supremo que exculpó a los militares golpistas ABC. 18.08.2002(Those eleven magistrates have no moral to make any other kind of decision, they are immoral and should publish a book with their faces so that the people know them. They put the plasta). Chávez announced a strategy to revert the decision, creating a commission in the National Assembly to review the stay of the justices in the Supreme Tribunal, saying that "No nos vamos a quedar con esa, ahora lo que viene es un contraataque del pueblo y de las instituciones verdaderas, contraataque revolucionario" and that "Así que la AN que los nombró tiene que asumir su tarea, para evaluarlos y el que no tenga los requisitos habrá que sacarlo de allí".(We are not going to stay with that, now what is coming is a counterattack of the people and the real institutions, revolutionary counterattack" and that "So the AN that appointed them has to assume its task, to evaluate them and whoever does not have the requirements will have to be removed from there.)
The result was a new Supreme Tribunal of Justice Law with two purposes: establishing a procedure to suspend justices and increasing the number of justices from 20 to 30.Tragarla como un pez con espinas El Universal. 18.01.2013 The following year, the executive branch managed to promote the increase to 32 justices, after which the Tribunal started the reviewed the original sentence. On 14 March 2005, the Tribunal overruled the decision.Véase noticia de Radio Nacional de Venezuela. The opposition considers that the override of the sentence was caused by the changes made to the high court by a legislation change by lawmakers of the ruling party, which had a majority at the time.Véase un análisis más detallado en Analítica Government supporters consider that the first sentence was political and there were several reasons to start a trial of a coup d'état.Véase un análisis sobre la primera sentencia en La insignia.
2006 judicial year beginning During the 2006 judicial year beginning, the justices of the Supreme Tribunal stood up from the seats of the Criminal Chamber to chant "" (English: "Uh, ah, Chávez won't go!"), See also: War crimes in the Russian invasion of Ukraine. while president Chávez was present in the auditorium. The act was interpreted as a demonstration of political partiality by the justices and the institution.
Open letter of former Justice Eladio Aponte Aponte On 20 August 2009, drug trafficker Walid Makled was captured in Cúcuta by the Colombian Administrative Department of Security (DAS) and later moved to Bogotá. Walid was requested by both the American and the Venezuelan anti-narcotics authorities. During his arrest, Makled was found with a credential of the Venezuelan military prosecution, allegedly issued by the Supreme Tribunal justice Eladio Aponte Aponte. Venezuela's opposition's spokesperson, Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, declared that the investigation would be obstructed in the country by the very public officials.
On 16 April 2012, Aponte wrote an open letter from San José, Costa Rica, in which he claimed to have received orders and pressure from president Hugo Chávez to convict Iván Simonovis, security chief of the Metropolitan District of Caracas, as well as Caracas Metropolitan Police officers Henry Vivas and Lázaro Forero, applying the maximum sentence for their participation during the Llaguno Overpass events. The letter was published in September.
Aponte fled Venezuela to Costa Rica in April 2012 after being accused of assisting Makled who said he had been paying Aponte US$70,000 per month related to joint business ventures. Aponte then contacted the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration which provided him with a flight to the United States.
2015 justices appointment , for a part of Venezuelan society, the legitimacy of the Supreme Tribunal is in question, especially the legitimacy of its origin, due to the appointment on 23 December 2015 of 13 main justices and 21 supplementary justices by a lame duck National Assembly with a ruling party majority, as well as its actions since. Article 264 of the Venezuelan Constitution and Title V of the Supreme Tribunal of Justice Organic Law contemplate an extense procedure of more than thirty days for the appointment of the justices, both main and alternate, in which it is required to form a Judicial Nominations Committee integrated by members of the National Assembly and civil society, which will do a preselection of candidates that will be submitted to the Republican Moral Council: the Ombudsman, the Public Ministry and the Comptroller General, which will do a second preselection that in turn will be submitted to the National Assembly, which will have a lapse of three plenary sessions to appoint the justices with the vote of two thirds of the deputies or a fourth plenary session with the vote of a simple majority in case of not getting two thirds of the vote. The appointment of the justices was not done in accordance with the legal procedure, but with a hurried process carried out on 23 December 2015 by the lame duck National Assembly with a ruling party majority, when the legislature ended on 15 December, after being defeated on the 2015 parliamentary election, where the opposition, represented by the Democratic Unity Roundtable opposition coalition, gained 112 of the 167 seats.
During the process, the "Citizen branch" issued a list of preselected candidates of previous processes, endorsed by the Ombudsman Tarek William Saab and the Comptroller Manuel Galindo. The National Assembly approved the candidates in a single plenary session on the night of 23 December 2015.
Both the opposition and several jurists have described the appointment as illegal for not being performed according to the constitution and the Organic Law, including the challenges period, their lack of responses and the omission of the definite selections of the candidates. According to a mid 2016 report issued by the Venezuelan NGO Acceso a la Justicia (Access to Justice), only one of seven justices of the Constitutional Chamber comply with the requirements for the position demanded by Venezuelan laws and their designation process was irregular.
On 14 June 2016 the National Assembly nullified the appointment carried out in 2015.
Challenge of electoral results Weeks after the parliamentary elections and after the oathtaking of the elected representatives in the National Assembly, seven complaints were presented to the electoral results to the Amazonas, Aragua and Yaracuy states, six of which were rejected and one was admitted, suspending the results of the Amazonas state circuits.
The Electoral Chamber of the Supreme Tribunal ordered the Assembly to disincorporate the deputies from Amazonas, but the Assembly, presided by Henry Ramos Allup, disobeyed responding that the deputies already had parliamentary immunity; The Attorney General, Luisa Ortega Díaz, later assured that the National Assembly was not in contempt, since contempt could only be applied to individuals and not institutions.
After this, deputy Héctor Rodríguez, from the Great Patriotic Pole coalition, introduced an appeal to the TSJ on 7 January 2016 to declare null all of the acts of the National Assembly. On 11 January, the Tribunal accepted the appeal and ruled in favor of it, declaring without effect all of the acts of the National Assembly "while it stayed in contempt"
With each action of the National Assembly now in hands of the opposition, the ruling party introduced appeals to annul such actions, and through numerous sentences the Tribunal started limiting the Assembly actions established in the constitution, while at the same time it exercised actions constitutionally exclusive to the parliament with the justification of "legislative omission" due to the "contempt" of the Assembly.
Starting 2017, in an ordinary plenary session, the National Assembly, then presided over by Julio Borges, officially disincorporated the three contested deputies, complying with the condition of the Supreme Tribunal to end the "contempt". However, the Supreme Tribunal did not withdraw the contempt arguing that the previous directive, presided by Ramos Allup, was the one that should have done the procedure.
2017 constitutional crisis
Rulings 155 and 156