Sonia Ivette Vélez Colón, a former judge of the Puerto Rico Court of Appeals and former administrative director of the courts, analyzes Senate Bill 1096 (P. del S. 1096) from the standpoint of the municipal judge’s role and the structure of Puerto Rico’s judicial administration, in an opinion piece published by Microjuris al Día. She writes that judicial reforms are not ordinary legislative adjustments but decisions about the design of a constitutional power: who decides, who executes, how authority is distributed and what kind of justice is made possible.
She argues the proposal does not stem from a technical report by the Judicial Branch, from the work of a structural commission or from empirical studies or impact analyses, and that its statement of motives is not organized around social gaps, inequality or structural lags in access to justice. Instead, she writes, it rests on a specific constitutional interpretation built around an alleged "historic error" in the distribution of administrative power, shifting the focus from justice for citizens to the internal governance of the judicial leadership.
She traces the history of the entry-level judge, from Spanish rule in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, when no judge was a law graduate, through the 1832 creation of the Audiencia Territorial and the 1897 Carta Autonómica, to the 1902 Foraker Act’s justice of the peace, who set bail, issued arrest warrants and acted as examining judge in serious crimes.