In our republican scheme, there are few acts of greater importance that the President and the senators can order with their sole signature than the consecration of a judge for the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation. It always constitutes a decision with immediate repercussions and, depending on the case, even with consequences that can last for decades depending on the age of the candidate who finally achieves the agreement of the Senate.
The vast world of powers of the highest court in the country is part of ensure the balance of powers and the assignment of powers between the federal and provincial governments that the Constitution delimits. It is up to the Supreme Court to determine what corresponds to the former and what is reserved for the latter as part of the federal design of the Argentine State.
It is also up to the Court the correct definition of what is justifiable and what is not in order to prevent the Judiciary from interfering in tasks that are foreign to it; the safeguard, ultimately, that the rights and guarantees for the life, honor or fortune of Argentines are not at the mercy of any person or government, and review the validity of the acts of the other powers.
Nominating Judge Lijo as a candidate to occupy a seat on the Supreme Court of Justice is equivalent to undoing the argument that he was supposedly coming to put an end to the caste that ruined the country. Because of his friends, because of the sordid world he surrounds himself with, Lijo is no stranger to that caste: it is his quintessence.
How the examination of these capital issues of the institutionality of the republic concern only some aspects of the daily work of a judge of the Court, it will be understood How many legal skills are required to join the high court?. And, above all, how much personal integrity to transmit to society the reliability of the rectitude of their judgments as a natural emanation of a transparent trajectory, both in public and private life. It is a cruel nightmare that this must be remembered again today in the republic due to a reckless decision by the Executive Branch.
Once the Nation was unified in 1860, the president Bartolome Miter He was clear about the importance of the first Supreme Court. He thus appointed jurists of great value; among them, to Benjamin Gorostiaga y Salvador del Laneboth members of the Santa Fe Constituent Convention. Miter could not have been more explicit when he said that he had searched “for men who were an impartial and unsuspected comptroller of the excesses of the other powers of the State and who, coming from the opposition, gave their fellow citizens the greatest security of the broad protection of their rights and the guarantee of total and absolute independence of the Power of attorney”. Miter went so far in the consummation of his laudable purposes that the five judges of the Court that he left integrated in 1863 were outside the orbit of his direct influence as leader of a political party. It is also necessary to think about the qualities of so many subsequent members of the Court: Antonio Bermejo, Roberto Repetto, Francisco Ramos Mejía, Alfredo Orgaz, Esteban Imaz, Benjamín Villegas Basavilbaso, Pedro Aberastury, Genaro Carrió, Carlos Faytand more recently, Gustavo Bossert y Carmen Argibay.
Even disregarding the criminal aspects that were rejected regarding the magistrate, the irrefutable, simple and resounding principle remains that no person about whom there are doubts regarding his honorability can reach such a high position.
In some countries with a constitutional design similar to ours, the focus is usually placed, as possible candidates, on judges who are members of high-ranking courts, such as members of higher state courts or Federal Courts of Appeal, given their familiarity with the tool that allows the entry into the Supreme Court, which is the so-called extraordinary federal appeal. This is an area of Law whose knowledge is mandatory in order to decide whether the technical conditions are met for its authorization and subsequent intervention by the Court.
Under these parameters, it is really difficult to understand the judge’s nomination Ariel Lijo. We are not even remotely dealing with a person with relevant academic training, even though he works as a second-class assistant, a step markedly lower than that of a full professor, in a chair of Constitutional Law at the UBA. Nor are there any known publications that position him as an expert in areas of constitutional relevance, or as a prominent expert on the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court, an aspect that informs the vast majority of the decisions of that court.
If it is not his knowledge, the question that arises is what may have led the Executive Branch to choose him over many candidates with greater legal training, without forgetting that, when it came to filling the vacancy left by Elena Hightonthe reasonable thing, and in accordance with current standards, would have been to propose a woman.
When it came to filling the vacancy left by Elena Highton de Nolasco, the reasonable thing to do, and in accordance with current standards, would have been to propose a woman from the many solid and impeccable jurists that our country has.
To explain what happened, hypotheses are considered that succeed for different reasons. The affinity between Lijo and Court Judge Ricardo Lorenzetti is known. It is also the lesser influence of this in the decision-making processes and formation of majorities in the Court of which he was president, compared to what is presented today as a more harmonious block formed by his colleagues, the judges. Horacio Rosatti, Carlos Rosenkrantz y Juan Carlos Maqueda.
Promote a nomination of such an entity in the desire to weaken the strength of that bloc, elevating to one of the vacant seats on the court a person without the necessary professional qualities and with a morality placed in such intense controversy as no other is remembered in the judicial history of the country, emerges into an astonishing phenomenon.
The obstinacy to promote Lijo has no possible explanation in a process intended to overcome the distressing economic and moral situation in which the previous administration left the country. That nomination thus amounts to undoing the argument that the new government was coming to put an end to “the caste” that led the country to ruin. For his friendships, for the world he surrounds himself with, for his aura, Lijo is the quintessence of that caste whose influence was supposed to be eliminated. So there is no other explanation than that the Executive Branch is seeking the formation of a Court that is tolerant of a government that acts through decrees of necessity and urgency, knowing what the Court has said to the contrary on the matter. .
It would be even less edifying if the head of State were planning to prepare the way for the constitution of a Court with a different spirit than the current one, further removed from the republican commitment to society, and more inclined to rinses that ultimately leave serious acts unpunished. of corruption that occurred in the Kirchnerist governments.
There have been investigations regarding the conduct and assets of a brother of Judge Lijo following an accusation that also included him as a defendant. According to the complainants, That investigation was closed without it being clear to what level of depth the reports produced by the Financial Information Unit were analyzed.. Such conclusions, they maintain, would have cast serious suspicions on the legality of the activities carried out by Judge Lijo’s brother, his enrichment from his activity as a lobbyist in cases pending in the same jurisdiction where the judge works, and the commercial relationships. and corporate relationships of the judge’s brother with public officials investigated in that same jurisdiction.
Let us ignore the criminal aspects that surrounded the issue and that have been dismissed up to this point with regard to the magistrate under discussion. The irrefutable, simple and emphatic principle remains that he cannot be a judge – and even less so of the Supreme Court – whoever is over whom there are doubts about his honorability.
On this matter, a group of entities and personalities of such significance have publicly taken charge that it is difficult to see how the President can insist on the contested nomination without betraying the banner with which he came to power. He may or may not succeed in the proposed nomination, but if the former happens he will pay an enormous price in the realm of the behaviors he pledged to eradicate.