Acceso usuarios
Emilia Iñesta Pastor
A study of executive power and the legislative elaboration process during the reign of Isabel II leads to an understanding of one of the government's distinctive features. During the rule of the Moderate Party (1844�1854), and despite the fact that according to the Constitution of 1845 the legislative initiative lay with the king and the parliament, the ministerial initiatives prevailed over parliamentary proposals by means of legislative delegation. The lack of constitutional regulation brought about the existence of several types of delegation. Contemporaries noted their excessive use arising from the fact that it was very easy to govern with this system and, above all, because they were granted to all governments without political distinction. A paradigmatic illustration of the use of delegation is the Spanish Penal Code of 1848. This was because of the scope of its contents (the code put an end to the Ancien Regime in Spain) and because it had a structure and a scientific orientation which were going to exert a recognised influence, not only on Spain's subsequent Spanish Penal Codes until reaching the one in force from 1995, but also in Latin America. The Penal Code was equally important, because it clearly shows how the chambers themselves were not only unable to limit the government's capacity to introduce law, but even enlarged it by conferring upon the latter extraordinary powers for its future reform, limited by the only condition that the government had to inform the chambers once the reforms had been completed. An analysis of parliamentary debates allows us to understand the position of the moderate and progressive parties towards this practice.
