The professor Juli Ponce receives an award for his research on the legal limits of public cuts

To be exact, the award-winning research, El derecho y la (ir)reversibilidad limitada de los derechos sociales de los ciudadanos. Las líneas rojas constitucionales a los recortes y la sostenibilidad social, analyses the possible reversibility of social rights, their limits and requirements, in the current worrying socio-economic situation. Taking as a departure point the doctrinal and legal situation of Spain, the work discusses that Spanish Constitution includes real subjective social rights which can be legally demanded. After considering the jurisprudence of the Spanish Constitutional Court and courts of other countries, Ponce concludes that it is not legally possible for public powers to cut anything and in any way they want. The Constitution and the Statutes establish a limit on what can be cut, and they offer some legal recommendations about how it must be done, evaluating the social, environmental and economic impacts that cuts may produce, before and after taking decisions.

The work proposes six measures that, if they are taken in a future, may help to legally reduce the tenseness between rights and the constitutional principle of budget stability, to improve public management, and to achieve a greater social sustainability.

The jury of the Lorenzo Martín-Retortillo Baquer Award, organised by the Spanish Association of Administrative Law Professors, is composed by the professors Jean Bernard Auby (professor at Science Po Paris, and director of Changes in Governance and Public Law, MADP), José Luis Carro Fernández-Valmayor (University of Santiago de Compostela), Francisco López Menudo (University of Seville), Luis Martín Rebollo (University of Cantabria), and the Supreme Court Justice José Manuel Bandrés Sanchez-Cruzat. The awardʼs name belongs to one of the most prestigious Spanish experts on human rights. The award is conferred every two years and aims at promoting research on human rights, paying tribute to the professor Martín-Retortillo and encouraging new generations to fight for human rights.