Patrimonial responsibility of the Public Administration

Generally, when we speak of Responsibility as an institute or legal figure, we think of that obligation to repair the damage caused to an individual, but exclusively a private matter. The former president of the Supreme Court of Justice Jorge Subero Isa, in his text Treaty of Civil Responsibility (2018), states that the notion of responsibility applied to law means one of the ways in which the coercion of the law is manifested, imposing the responsible of causing the damage, the obligation to repair it. Respecting the parallelism, he adds that civil liability is a source of obligations, because it establishes an obligational link between the person responsible and the victim, resulting in the former becoming the debtor of the latter. The importance of civil liability in contrast to the patrimonial liability of the State and, specifically, of the Public Administration, is that as of article 148 of the Dominican Constitution, the public official is civilly responsible for his actions, under the condition of that it is proven that he acted negligently in the exercise of his functions. Subero Isa (2018) indicates that civil liability is a permanent watchdog of our behavior, taking charge of putting a price on coexistence in society when as a result of it harm is caused to another. He also adds that it is dominated by two fundamental premises: a) Anyone who turns out to be responsible for the damage caused is obliged to repair it, and, b) Any damage caused not permitted by the Magna Carta or the laws, or by the contract to the extent that it is valid, must be repaired. It may interest you: Abinader qualifies as "madness" to modify the constitution with re-election objectives Likewise, the magistrate Argenis García del Rosario in Foundations of the Patrimonial Responsibility of the State (2018), highlights that in 1520, the unexpected death of some monarch leaders and some dynastic alliances bequeathed to the known world, the most powerful monarch in all of Europe, with barely twenty years old, referring to Carlos V, who inherited the crowns of Castile and Aragon, as well as territorial possessions in the Mediterranean and America. In that same order, the honorable judge cites that, that was the time of the absolute irresponsibility of the public administration, since it was precisely an absolutist State where the monarch was above his own laws and could exercise his government without limits. nor any restriction other than with himself. Remember that famous phrase of Louis XIV: L'etat, c'est moi, or "I am the State". In particular, I share what Judge García del Rosario affirms, when he states that traditionally it has been thought that when it is the administration that acts, it has no obligation to repair because, simply, the administration is not wrong –the king can do not wrong- and if it does, it is for the good of the social group. Until then, the irresponsibility of the State was the rule and in great powers such as England, the United States or France, responsibility for damages caused by the administration was not admitted.