Daniel Berzosa, professor of Constitutional Law and Fundamental Rights at Cunef University, the Institute of Stock Exchange Studies and the IE Law & Business School, member of the Global Academy and the Scientific Council of the international organisation Citizens pro Europe, and full member and member of the Governing Board of the Royal European Academy of Doctors (RAED), reflects on the role of the judiciary in the rule of law in the article “The Judge and the Soul of the Law”, published on 30 June in the prestigious “La Tercera” section of the newspaper “ABC”. The distinguished jurist also participated in the Summer Courses organised by the Complutense University of Madrid from 15 to 17 July in San Lorenzo de El Escorial under the title “The 1978 Constitution: In Intensive Care or Already Receiving Palliative Care?”. The event brought together other prominent representatives from the judicial, academic, political and journalistic spheres. Directed by Manuel Almenar, a judge of the First Chamber of the Supreme Court, the meeting was sponsored by the Foundation for the Judiciary and Telefónica.
According to the academic, the role of the judge is surrounded by a dispute arising from two opposing traditions: the American tradition, shaped by the anthropological realism of its Founding Fathers and committed to a strong judiciary as guardian of the Constitution against possible legislative tyranny by parliamentary majorities; and the French revolutionary tradition, which, distrusting judges because of their association with the Ancien Régime, reduced the magistrate to a mere “mouth of the law”, in the words of Montesquieu—an automaton that mechanically applies the general will without interpretative discretion. Faced with this dilemma, Berzosa advocates a liberal balance inspired by Benjamin Constant, who warned that rigid legalism could lead to a new form of despotism. Laws, by their abstract and general nature, cannot encompass the full complexity of human reality, and a prudent margin of judicial interpretation is therefore essential to ensure equity and protect individual freedoms against abuses by the executive or legislature.
Dr. Daniel Berzosa
This view, the expert explains, is connected to the humanist scepticism of Michel de Montaigne, a critic of overregulation, and is brought up to date by thinkers such as John Rawls, who regarded judges as a paradigmatic example of public reason founded on shared constitutional values, and Ronald Dworkin, through his metaphor of Judge Hercules, which conceives law as a coherent system of rules and higher moral principles. Berzosa concludes that, in times of populism and polarisation, an independent magistrate—removed both from Jacobin automatism and partisan political activism—is not a democratic anomaly, but the final line of defence for the rule of law and Western civilisation. Reaffirming the judge’s role and legitimate scope for interpretation is equivalent to safeguarding individual freedom against the concealed tyranny of temporary majorities.
Berzosa is a member of the United States Society of Diplomacy and Political Science, coordinator of the International Observatory on the Regulation of Public-Sector Entities at the University of Santiago de Compostela, a member of the organising committees of the World Law Congress events held in Cartagena de Indias in 2021 and Madrid in 2019, and the author of books and scientific articles published in prestigious journals. He is also a recognised commentator on legal affairs and political science in Spain’s leading media outlets.
