Constitutional Supremacy and its Guarantees: The Cases of Spain and United Kingdom

This article examines constitutional supremacy guarantees in two antithetical constitutional models. The first model is that of Spain, where there is strong judicial primacy. The second model is that of the United Kingdom, where there is weak judicial primacy. The paper suggests that, from a deliberative democratic perspective of legitimacy, neither of the two models has sufficient legitimacy credentials. Therefore, it will be argued that the guarantee of constitutional supremacy can be more legitimately achieved if the principles of deliberative democracy are endorsed. This implies that the authority of the applicable law should operate not in terms of exclusivity, but in terms of complementarity and reciprocal deference.