Miriam Naveira

Miriam Naveira Merly (born July 28, 1934 in Santurce, Puerto Rico) is a Puerto Rican jurist who served in the Supreme Court of Puerto Rico from 1985 to 2004. Naveira was the first female to serve on the court as well as the first female Chief Justice (2003-2004).

Biography

Naveira was born in Santurce, Puerto Rico in 1934. She obtained her Bachelor's Degree in Chemistry from the College of Mount Saint Vincent and her Law degree from the University of Puerto Rico.

Naveira was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1985 by then Governor Rafael Hernández Colón becoming the first woman on that court. During her tenure, Naveira was known as a pragmatic and moderate justice.

After the retirement of Chief Justice José Andreu García in 2003, Governor Sila Calderón elevated Justice Naveira to the post of Chief Justice. However, her tenure lasted only seven months since the Constitution of Puerto Rico states that Supreme Court Justices must retire at the age of seventy. She was succeeded by her colleague Federico Hernández Denton.

Criticisms of the Supreme Court from the Perspective of the Legal Academy of Puerto Rico

The current Supreme Court is a conservative, slow entity, a fragmented thinking, which relies too much to the US Constitution, when the Puerto Rico contains more extensive rights, and whose integrity is threatened by the inaction of the Governor to fill the vacancy.

Professor of Constitutional Right David M Helfeld of the highest court in Puerto Rico's jurisdiction describes the supreme court in this way in an article published in the legal journal of the University of Puerto Rico (UPR). Other law professors at UPR created critiques of the supreme court in a recent continued education activity of which hundreds of lawyers were in attendance. The Supreme Court said that they would not answer questions posed by "Primera Hora" about the points of analysis of the professors. This resulted in the delay of the study of this referendum by the secretary of the Judicial Conference.

Helfeld also presented statistics that revealed, according to his análisis, that in 2005 and 2006 the proportion of presented cases could become resolved cases before ending with a lower number of pending cases in 2006 than in 2005.

Regarding the vacancy, open since Baltasar Corrada del Rio retired in April of 2005, and for which there is going to be another vacancy after the retirement of Judge Francisco Rebollo in August of 2008, they are limited to say only that the Governor will make the appointment "when ready."

Regarding the slowness, Helfeld remarked that "without a doubt, the excessive delays significantly diminish the quality of justice" and that "for too long, the judges have not even mentioned the problem of the excessive delays, as if they do not exist," therefore they requested a study from which may arise "a new judicial policy committed to efficient justice."

Regarding the vacancy, according to the professor, it is treated as a balance problem both in the legal thinking and in the ideological thinking of the six current judges, of which only two are statesman. In fact, the next one to retire is a statesman so that without someone appointed to follow him, the tribunal will be composed of four "independent statesmen" and a statesman.

The third remark, "fragmentación del pensamiento" or "fragmentation of though" is credited to the Chief Justice Federico Hernandez Denton, since he is the first at his post to call to create a consensus, for example, none of the 13 cases decided in 2006 regarding the constitutional right will be resolved unanimously. This responsibility of the Chief Justice is the same as in the federal Supreme Court, where the new head John Roberts has said in interviews that their primary task is to accommodate the views of his colleagues for the court to speak with a strong voice instead of with fragile majorities that can't lay down a respected precedent.

The last three points of analysis of Helfeld are directly pertain to each Puerto Rican in regard to their rights. The professor accused the court of relying too heavily on the Constitution and federal legal sources to interpret provisions of the Constitution of Puerto Rico, and with having a lack of drive to articulate broader rights granted to citizens by the constitution.

This occurs at the same time the Supreme appeals more to inaction than action to resolve disputes. The current Supreme "is not activist: and should not be waited on to create new rights. It is a conservative court", he said while speculating that this may be a reaction to the" political partisanship, without a headquarters" that the island suffers from.

Finally, and in spite of this, the writing of Helfeld raises the hope that the conservative approach is not going to produce powerlessness and that "when it is necessary to resolve a dispute between the branches of government," the court will act.

The criticism was joined by Guillermo Figueroa Prieto, a professor of ethics who called attention to the fact that the Supreme Court almost always resolves ethical complaints in a Per Curiam form, i.e. without knowing which of the members was the one who wrote the decision.

"Saying to proceed reflects a lack of interest of the Supreme Court in the development of this discipline and a lack of rigor with which the same one must be attended," said the professor about one of the powers of the court that is unique to them throughout the government.

"Nor paid to the development of the discipline of the discipline the mere expressions of dissent or concurrency without such votes being accompanied with proper opinions explaining the way of thinking of the judge. Being the court of greater hierarchy in our jurisdiction, with the exclusive responsibility of establishing precedents and advertising the law, the men and women judges that make up the Supreme Court should disclose to the robed class the fundamentals as to why they had to vote against the opinion of the majority" it is argued.