The provisions of Article 85 of the Law on the Constitutional Court and Constitutional Procedures establish that the amparo judge shall, ex officio, supply any legal ground and may, in a single judgment, decide both on the merits and on any incidental matters, if any have arisen, except with respect to objections of lack of jurisdiction.

Based on this provision, the active role of the amparo judge is recognized in our legal doctrine. For a judge to have an active role implies that he or she possesses ex officio procedural initiative. According to Joan Picó Junoy, Professor of Procedural Law at the Rovira i Virgili University, in his contribution to the book Constitutionalization of Civil Procedure published by the National School of the Judiciary, most European jurisdictions, with regard to controlling the completion of the different acts or stages of the proceedings and ensuring their continuity in accordance with procedural rules, have opted for ex officio procedural impulse; that is, judicial activity aimed at ensuring the completion of such procedural acts.

This trend is tempered by the possibility that the parties may voluntarily and expressly suspend the processing of the proceedings, as well as by the legislature’s establishment of reasonable time limits, after the expiration of which it must be understood that the parties’ interest in continuing the proceedings has ceased.

In amparo proceedings, it may be stated that the judge directs the process. In this regard, the jurisprudence of the Dominican Constitutional Court, in Judgment TC/0835/17, held that the amparo judge has a very active role in the proceedings, in contrast to what occurs with the ordinary judge. In this sense, the amparo judge may order all measures deemed pertinent and, most importantly, may gather all evidence necessary to establish the violation of the fundamental right at issue. The broad evidentiary powers of the amparo judge are limited only by the preservation of the right of defense of the party alleged to have committed the violation. This implies respect for the principle of adversarial proceedings, guaranteeing that party the opportunity to challenge the evidence obtained by the judge and, where appropriate, to submit any evidence it deems relevant.

It is for this reason that the amparo judge in the Dominican Republic may, from the moment the lawsuit is filed until the sentence is issued, request documents from the interested party and even from the person against whom the action is brought, regarding actions performed in the exercise of their functions, in order to better understand the matter. The judge may even request the regularization of the proceedings. In this regard, paragraph I of article 87 states the following:

“Natural or legal persons, public or private, organs or agents of public administration to whom a request is addressed in order to obtain information or documents are obliged to provide them without delay, within the term set by the judge.”

In the essay “El juicio de amparo: Origen y Evolución hasta la Constitución de 1917. Tres Casos Paradigmáticos que determinaron su configuración,” by Marcos del Rosario Rodríguez, it is stated that the amparo judge is a proactive judge, rejecting all passivity that would allow non-application of a normative provision contrary to constitutional supremacy. In this sense, the amparo judge is empowered to find, on his own, the most appropriate means to obtain certainty regarding the disputed facts, since there is no logic in depriving the judge of the power to decide when the process requires evidence and when the evidentiary means are most appropriate, if the purpose of the evidence is to convince the judge of the reality of a factual assertion made by a party.

Bibliografía

“Los poderes del juez del amparo constitucional.” Disponible en Internet: https://fc-abogados.com/es/los-poderes-del-juez-del-amparo-constitucional/. Consultado el 13-03-2020 a las 8:25 p.m.

“Función directiva del juez.” Disponible en Internet: https://www.esade.edu/itemsweb/research/ipdp/funcion-directiva-juez.pdf. Consultado el 13-03-2020 a las 8:38 p.m.

“Títulos y funciones del juez.” Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Disponible en Internet: https://archivos.juridicas.unam.mx/www/bjv/libros/9/4317/9.pdf. Consultado el 13-03-2020 a las 8:26 p.m.