On January 18, at the headquarters of the Academy of Political and Social Sciences, a tribute was held to honor the memory of Josefina Calcaño de Temeltas, recognized as a reference in the exercise of the judiciary. The event was sponsored, in addition to the Academy, by the Administrative Law Studies Foundation (Funeda), the Venezuelan Association of Administrative Law (Aveda) and by the Latin American Center for Legal Research.
Luciano Lupini Bianchi, Rafael Badell Madrid, Cecilia Sosa, Jesús María Casal and Belén Ramírez Landaeta were in charge of highlighting the intellectual, institutional, university and human values, as well as the contributions of the jurisprudential lines of Josefina Calcaño de Temeltas. He Newsletter number 172 of Acienpol was dedicated to his memory; and Funeda is about to publish a book in which his jurisprudential lines are examined.
Josefina Calcaño de Temeltas left her mark on doctrine, university teaching and jurisprudence. She therefore had complete influence on Venezuelan law, because in the era of democracy, the judiciary had jurists who left relevant work in the spaces in which they exercised their responsibilities.
Administrative law scholars unhesitatingly recognize the jurisprudential contributions of the decisions issued under the presentations of Calcaño de Temeltas. The legal nature of administrative documents, administrative silence, the distinction between constitutional justice and administrative justice, methods of interpretation of tax regulations, the definition of government acts, among others, are significant contributions to the evolution of administrative law. Venezuelan.
Predictability, consistency and coherence were characteristics of the sentences of Josefina Calcaño de Temeltas. In her decisions there was a process of consolidation of jurisprudence. There was no contradiction between one decision and another. In this way, the principle of legitimate trust and legal certainty was respected. When this is not the case, jurisprudence as a source of law becomes a dead letter.
Regarding doctrine, the honoree also left a relevant legacy. She wrote more than twenty books and numerous research articles. Among them, it is worth highlighting here a work entitled “The legitimacy of the judge” (Bulletin of the Academy of Political and Social Sciences, No. 172, pp. 62-162). To be legitimate, he stated, the magistrate must meet some subjective and objective requirements; among them, his ethical and intellectual suitability, as well as his impartiality and independence in the exercise of his functions, as ordered by article 256 of the Constitution. A magistrate who does not comply with these requirements lacks legitimacy, which affects the authority and credibility of his decisions. In these cases, it is a de facto magistracy and not a legal one.
On the other hand, the suitable judge is required to enter the Judiciary through competitive examination, as stated in article 255 of the Constitution. This is at odds with the figure of the provisional judge, which is a way of maintaining control of the judges. Likewise, the figure of the provisional judge affects the right to be judged by the natural judge. As if that were not enough, the appointment of judges due to their political ties to the person who appoints them affects the principle of impartiality and independence that should characterize the Judiciary. Failure to comply with these budgets is what throws the Venezuelan justice system to the last place in international indices measuring the rule of law.
Another characteristic of the sentences of Josefina Calcaño de Temeltas is the clarity of the language and the consistency of the arguments used; the balanced game between abstraction and concreteness in the complex task of adapting the facts to the abstract assumptions of law. The illustrious magistrate did it with mastery. Thus she constructed the concepts, always supported by precisely expressed reasons. Her sentences can be understood by everyone, which is what is desired in judicial language.
Calcaño de Temeltas was a poet by vocation and wrote “some exquisite works for his own satisfaction and for the delight of his most intimate friends,” as Dr. René De Sola points out when responding to the recipient’s incorporation speech. He inherited those literary skills from his father, Antonio Simón Calcaño, who was an excellent Venezuelan writer, poet and journalist, as stated by Mariano Picón Salas. The thing is that to write well you have to have a love for good literature, which shows, once again, that humanistic culture is an irreplaceable ally of the clarity of legal language.
Josefina Calcaño de Temeltas was elected magistrate of the Political-Administrative Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice under the inspiring mantle of the Puntofijo Pact. This agreement was respected, even beyond the departure of URD from the Rómulo Betancourt government, and allowed the magistrates to be selected on the basis of consensus and their ethical and intellectual merits. When the method of distribution between parties is radicalized, the deterioration of the judicial system begins little by little. But the definitive break occurs when the political class stops complying with what was agreed and separates itself from the ideological debate and the commitments made. The figure of the statesman is replaced by the man of the machinery, the pragmatist who sought institutional control to feed populism. The consequence of this was the collapse of the foundations of democracy born in 1958. Jurists are no longer elected – like Josefina Calcaño de Temeltas – but rather judges whose fundamental merit is being the file of the political leader who appoints them. This is how the crisis of the Judiciary was generated, which has worsened in recent years.
Honoring the memory of Josefina Calcaño de Temeltas places us before the profile of what the majesty of the judiciary is. It is a way of recognizing the highest judicial and republican values. Hence the significance of the event held at the Academy of Political and Social Sciences, to remember her work and project her dignity.
May his example of probity and excellence serve as a model for new generations of lawyers and an incentive to regain hope.
The entry Josefina Calcaño from Temeltas was first published in EL NACIONAL.