On Tuesday, 25 November 2014, Dr. Javier Junceda, the Dean of the UIC’s Faculty of Law, was made an academic member of the Royal Asturian Academy of Jurisprudence. He marked the occasion with a speech on the subject of financial liability, under the title of Society’s Shared Burdens: Limits on the Financial Liability of Public Administrations.
“Judges in contentious-administrative courts are refusing requests to make public administrations financially liable and rejecting claims for damages and losses, and instead referring to ‘shared’ or ‘common’ burdens that society must bear as a matter of course. I do not agree with this”, said Dr. Junceda at the start of his speech.
“Some judges have argued lately that these claims for damages should not be paid because they correspond to damages that citizens should accept in their capacity as citizens”, he explained. “I believe that if they are indeed ‘burdens’ to be shouldered by citizens, the law must specify it in each case, in each piece of legislation governing each specific subject. I do not agree that these matters should be left to the whim of judicial decision making because our system is based on the primacy of the law and not on decisions made by judges”.
Dr. Junceda then went on to speak about the concept of financial liability as a whole. “We need to adjust the system so that it is more in keeping with the legal, social and economic reality of Spain”, he declared.
The response to Dr. Junceda’s address was provided by Leopoldo Tolivar Alas, the President of the Royal Asturian Academy of Jurisprudence. The session took place at the offices of the Oviedo Bar Association.
