Director of the Royal Academy of Language (RAE), academic of the Royal Academy of Moral and Political Sciences (RACMYP) and, from today, also of the Royal Academy of Jurisprudence and Legislation. This Monday, the jurist and writer Santiago Muñoz Machado joined the institution dedicated to the research and cultivation of Law in Spain. With his admission, the writer becomes the only intellectual currently a full member of three royal academies of the Institute of Spain.
Muñoz Machado has articulated his entrance speech as a defense of administrative law that “has managed to arbitrate instruments that allow for the full submission of the Administration to legality and to effectively guarantee the rights of citizens, when they are affected by acts or omissions of the Administration,” he said to assume medal number 19, vacated by Lorenzo Martín Retortillo’s transfer to the status of Emeritus. An achievement, he assures, the result of “the efforts of successive generations of jurists over two centuries”, but which is currently “threatened by the rapid progress of the digital revolution and, in particular, Artificial Intelligence”.
“The territorial dimension of the problem is global and of global relevance are the threats that affect democracy; state regulations are not enough, which are insufficient: fundamental rights to political participation, privacy, data protection, intellectual property and freedom of expression are affected and new forms of protection are necessary,” he continued. And he proposed some solutions: “We must rethink all forms of citizen relations with public power and articulate them again. It is also necessary to enable remedies for the great digital divide that citizens who have difficulties accessing AI will increasingly suffer.”
Listening to him in the palace on Marqués de Cubas Street, the Madrid headquarters of the institution, were the secretary general of the Organization of Ibero-American States, and the secretary general of all the legal academies of Ibero-America; the president of the Supreme Court and the General Council of the Judiciary, all the emeritus presidents of the Constitutional Court and the Supreme Court, vice presidents and magistrates of both institutions, councilors of State, presidents and academics of several academies integrated into the Institute of Spain, and a large attendance of academics from the Royal Spanish Academy and the Royal Academy of Moral and Political Sciences.
Muñoz Machado has been director of the RAE since 2018 and, in addition to being a historian, writer and academic, he is also a professor of Administrative Law and a lawyer. He is president of the Association of Academies of the Spanish Language (ASALE), ex-officio counselor of State and was president of the Institute of Spain in 2019. He is also an author of an extensive and varied bibliography, which covers almost a hundred books and countless articles and studies on various subjects. Thus, he has been recognized with the National Essay Award (2013) for Report on Spain. Rethink the State or destroy itand with the National History Prize (2018) for We speak the same language. Political history of Spanish in America, from the Conquest to the Independence.
The Academy that you have joined today, whose history dates back to the 18th century, has as its main purposes the research and cultivation of Law and related sciences, as well as contributing to the improvement of legislation in Spain. To achieve this, it assumes various functions that include the study and teaching of various legal subjects through sessions of the Full Academic Plenary and the Scientific Sections. One more plenary session that Muñoz Machado will attend weekly.