A raison d’être for the judicial process. An analysis from the spanish procedural system

Abstract

Several Spanish authors have conceptualised the judicial process as a forced and inevitable temporal evolution that must precede the resolution of the controversy and that depends on slow-ness -as the antithesis of immediacy-. According to this doctrine, this process aims to avoid an immediate judicial response. In this paper, I will examine why the judicial process has been defined in this way; the reasons why speed is not desirable in the judicial function. To this end, I draw on the findings of cognitive psychology and, more specifically, on a set of theories that support the existence of two ways of processing information—two ways of knowing, believing, thinking, reasoning, and acting—: one fast and one slow; these are the dual processing theories. As a result of this confrontation, I propose a rationale, a purpose, and a definition for the judicial process, which are based on the idea that the presence of a time interval is necessary for the right to judicial impartiality and the right of defence to -materially- exist