Ex parte Larrea y Fernandez

• Jurisdiction: Cuba
• Docket Number: Case No. 145
• Date: 30 June 1932
• Court: Supreme Court (Cuba)

Cuba, Supreme Court.

Case No. 145

Ex parte Larrea Y Fernández.

Aliens — Position of — Equality with Nationals — Constitutional Guarantees of — Attachment of Property — The Law of Cuba.

The Facts.—In this case the State had brought an action against several debtors, including the appellant, and had obtained a preliminary attachment against the appellant's property. The attachment was granted on the sole ground that he was an unnaturalised alien.2 The appellant claimed that the relevant provision of the Law on Civil Procedure was

unconstitutional, being in violation of Article 10, Sect. 3, of the Constitution. That article provided as follows: “Aliens resident in the territory of the Republic shall be on a basis of equality with Cubans: … 3. As to the enjoyment of civil rights, on the conditions and with the limitations established by the Law on Alienage.”

Held (by seven judges against four): that the relevant provision of the Law on Civil Procedure was unconstitutional. There was under that Law a decided inequality in the treatment of aliens as compared with that of citizens. The Court said: “That inequality of rights, explicable and perhaps necessary in the far off times when the Law on Civil Procedure was promulgated, when political relations and means of communication between peoples were very different from those at the present time, is contrary to Section 3 of Article 10 of the Constitution, which places Cubans and aliens residing in the territory of the Republic on a level of equality ‘as to the enjoyment of civil rights, on the conditions and with the limitations...