It is an unprecedented period. April 2023 was the last time the Senate approved documents to fill court vacancies. In the meantime, around 160 resignations were accepted from judges who retired or left their positions, which increased the systemic problem that affects the Judiciary. The president Javier Milei He has not appointed a judge since he took office, making it another record for a president’s first year in office. It already accumulates 184 shortlists to defineand a month ago he had announced that documents would be sent to the Senate – probably in batches of 70 first – but none of that happened.
Sebastián Amerio, the vice minister of Justice, is having a tough time with Santiago Caputo to whom he reports and is in charge of the macro judicial strategy. Gone were the promises that the Minister of Justice Mariano Cúneo Libarona had made to distribute places among the applicants according to their affinity with them.
Since Javier Milei took office, there has been no appointment of judges
Disavowed in a diluted management, certain vetoes that he had given to some competition participants due to their performance in previous cases, where his family’s study had been an injured litigant, were also not considered. Today, the actors of the system know that the vortex of power is in the office of the main presidential advisor and that, if a definition does not emerge from there, there will not be one.. This is what has been happening these months, where every week it seemed that messages were going to be sent for the Senate to approve documents, but it did not happen.
A monitoring carried out by the Judicial Council detected the existence of 305 vacancies in both the federal and national justice systemnow at the center of the controversy due to the ruling of the Supreme Court itself that exposed them to a kind of de facto transfer to CABA. The Senate had dealt with zero. Your responsibility is not complete.
The Executive Branch called to “recall” some 50 documents that Alberto Fernández had sent at the end of his government and already very worn out. It is a logical move to withdraw documents when there is a change of administration of a different political nature. They are supposed to review the list, negotiate the names again and send them as soon as possible.
That didn’t happen either, and all the rounds of shortlists that the Council raised this year were added to it. They totaled more than 100, which does not imply a correspondence with the number of contests, because some are multiple.
In the last plenary session on December 18, 23 more places were added. In addition, they reported that 40% of the vacancies that are in the Council’s orbit due to competition, evaluation, selection, shortlist or elevation, all have their process initiated. 60% is in the hands of the Executive Branch, which has 184 places to define, the majority of which are national and federal judges, prosecutors and defenders.. Sending them all together could also now generate a “Door 12” effect, with which the government collaborated in its own trap to solve the problem in which it is not visible what the course of action will be to deplete that stock.
He was stuck in sending the documents to the Supreme Court without having been successful yet. Added to that were a couple of renovations beyond 75 years for 5 more. That did not generate problems but it did not solve any of the problems that the actors in the system see.
Prosecutors, also in emergency
They have a similar problem in the Attorney General’s Office, where There are a number of Chamber prosecutors’ offices that are operating with interim coverage because the selection also depends on the Executive Branch and the approval of the Senate. The list includes three vacancies in the Administrative Investigations Prosecutor’s Office, which is responsible for investigating acts of corruption of public officials.
Then there are the federal attorney general offices of the Chamber of Appeals of Resistencia and the federal first instance of Puerto Iguazú, in addition to No. 2 of Posadas; the federal prosecutor’s office of Villa Mercedes, that of Paso de los libre and No. 2 of Corrientes capital and its superior before the Chamber of that province; the federal prosecutor’s office of Caleta Olivia and that of Río Gallegos.
The list is completed with five labor prosecutor’s offices and the attorney general’s office attached to the Chamber of Labor. We will have to see how this map looks with the decision of Jorge Macri’s government to approve the creation of ten labor courts in the Buenos Aires orbit that will operate under its control. It is exactly the number of courts that are vacant in the national justice system and now the Federal Capital, with its corresponding prosecutor’s offices, has grabbed them. Another problem in terms of transfer.
There are four other vacant prosecutor’s offices in the Economic criminal jurisdiction, which is considered federal because it concerns everything related to issues of smuggling, money laundering and crimes that can be reported by the treasury. Another four vacancies correspond to the attorney general’s offices before the Oral Criminal Courts, which are in charge of carrying out oral trials. There are 28 high-impact vacancies.
The problem – beyond being systemic – has now become a political issue that is increasingly difficult to resolve.. Those 18 months will become 20 only due to the chronological issue of the start of sessions in Congress, in March. Nothing indicates that there is a solution even if the ordinary period is resumed. The counter will continue to run.
Source: Ambito
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