THE REFORM OF THE UNIVERSAL JURISDICTION IN SPAIN

Defending the fact that the reform carried out in March 2014 was the answer to a request coming from International Law, as suggested by the Spanish legislator in the Explanatory Memorandum of the Law 1/20141, would oblige us to state that the legislation in force in Spain until then —not the old version of Article 23(4) of the Organic Law of the Judicial Power (LOPJ) passed in 1985, but the watered down version approved in 20092— exceeded what International Law allowed our country. Ultimately, such excess —if any— would obey to an interference in what should be understood as national jurisdiction matters of other states, or in other words, an attack to their sovereignty, something that, in my opinion, never happened. However, the above mentioned Explanatory Memorandum notices something I fully agree with: “the extension of the Spanish jurisdiction beyond the Spanish territorial borders must be legitimated and justified by the existence of an international treaty” or, I would add, by an international or even institutional customary rule, “that contemplates or authorises it”3 under any formula whatsoever. A few years ago my Master, Professor Quel López, and I pointed out something similar. It was regarding the inclusion of feminine genital mutilation in the list of offences of Article 23(4) LOPJ. We advised that the states are not free to increase the number of offenses subject to the principle of universal justice as they deem fit, because it depends on the existence of a basis or fundament within international law itself4. In a monograph that is a reference for all of us devoted to the study of this theme, Sánchez Legido stated that, today, the idea suggested by the Permanent Court of International Justice (PCIJ) in the judgment of the Lotus case is unacceptable, a judgment that, even then was passed by a very tight majority. It dealt with the absence of limits in the states’ extraterritorial