HOW DOES THE PUBLICATION OF CONSTITUTIONAL COURT JUDGMENTS WORK?

Article 136 of the Constitution provides that where a law is declared unconstitutional, it ceases to have effect from the day following the publication of the judgment.
According to Article 30 of Law 87/1953, judgments of the Court are lodged with the registry and subsequently forwarded to the Ministry of Justice for publication in the Official Gazette. Provisions declared unconstitutional cease to have effect from the day following the publication of the Court’s judgments in the Official Gazette.
Article 3 of Law 839/1984 and Article 21 of Presidential Decree 1092/1985 provide for the publication in the Official Gazette of all judgments of the Constitutional Court, not only those upholding a challenge.
The publication of judgments of the Constitutional Court is also governed by a series of other provisions that help clarify the matter.
Article 19 of Law 87/1953 provides that decisions of the Constitutional Court shall be lodged with the Court’s registry and that anyone may inspect them and obtain a copy.
Article 22 of the same Law refers, as regards procedure before the Constitutional Court, to the rules of procedure before the Council of State in its judicial capacity. This was Royal Decree 642/1907, now repealed, Article 67 of which provided for the publication of only the operative part of the judgment by the secretary of the judicial section of the Council of State.
The reference to the old rules of procedure is today replaced by Legislative Decree No. 104/2010 (Code of Administrative Procedure), which contains two fundamental rules regarding the publication of judgments.
First of all, Article 39, which refers to the Code of Civil Procedure for everything not governed by the Code of Administrative Procedure. Therefore, Article 133 of the Code of Civil Procedure, which provides for the publication of the judgment by lodging it with the registry, also applies to administrative proceedings, and thus to proceedings before the Constitutional Court.
Article 89 of the Code of Administrative Procedure provides that the secretary (the equivalent of the court clerk in administrative proceedings) shall record the lodging of the judgment, also appending their signature to it.
From when, then, can a judgment of the Constitutional Court be said to be published and in existence? From the day it is lodged with the registry. This is reported on the official website of the Constitutional Court where, with reference to Judgments 14, 15, and 16 of 2023, it states that they were lodged on 9 February 2023. The judgments, with their text already known, will then be published in the 1st Special Series of the Official Gazette, which is normally issued once a week. The latest special series, No. 6, was published on 8 February 2023. The judgments will therefore be published in the next special series.
Therefore, the text that can be downloaded from the Constitutional Court website is the official one, and the judgments that many of us have commented on are valid, effective, and existent. That does not alter the fact that they represent an insult to the Constitution and to the rule of law, and a disgrace to the administration of justice in our country. This is what we must focus on. It is important to emphasise that judgments of dismissal by the Constitutional Court do not become res judicata, are never final, and the very same question of constitutionality can always be raised in other proceedings.