The Supreme Court debates Lijo's leave and postpones the decision on the swearing-in for a week
The Supreme Court of Justice will analyze tomorrow in its general agreement the future of federal judge Ariel Lijo . The file with the request for leave to which the Federal Chamber "granted" has already arrived at the court, but will leave it in the “freezer” a week and next Thursday "he would be in a position to define everything," a high judicial source told LA NACION.
Meanwhile, the Government is pushing for the Court to decide tomorrow or Friday what it will do with Lijo and swear him in, but The Supreme Court is not willing to have time limits set for it and he let it be known that he will only be in a position to decide in a week.
Lijo, appointed by Javier Milei by decree as a judge of the Court on commission until the end of the year, maintains that he will not resign from his position as a federal judge of first instance to be sworn in at the highest court, so for him to assume his new position, it is key that the Court endorse his leave, whether by action or omission.
The Federal Court's decision that "grants" the request is broad, giving the Court the opportunity to get involved in the case and oppose it, approve it or leave everything as is and move forward with the appointment.
In Comodoro Py 2002, no one believes that the Court will take a stand against Lijo and the Government by opposing the license , but if they are betting that the highest court will play its time and freeze the matter for a short time, as judicial sources point out,
Meanwhile, the Government is putting pressure and sending messages to the Court to swear in Lijo and Manuel García-Mansilla before Saturday, when Milei will speak before the Legislative Assembly . The President wants the entire Court there, complete with the new judges already sworn in, which remains to be seen.
If there is one thing that is not in the DNA of the Court, it is that it is dictated to by its own time. It has no desire to confront the Government, but it does not want to be pushed around either. "300 days have passed since the candidates were proposed and for us this has taken 10 hours," they said in court. The judges will set their timetables to decide on the license and the oath.
“These people took 300 days, that is why the Court will not resolve it in 24 hours,” they say in the courts. Of course, from the office of Judge Ricardo Lorenzetti , the view is different. The main sponsor of Lijo's arrival to the Court, they would prefer that the discussion about the license be put behind them, endorsing what the Federal Chamber said and that the judge be sworn in as soon as possible.
Tomorrow, the president of the Court, Horacio Rosatti , the vice president , Carlos Rosenkrantz, and Lorenzetti, will meet in their usual meeting to discuss the cases and sign sentences. There, the three will discuss the future of Lijo's license file and whether he will be sworn in or not. In another week, they will be in a position to decide.
With the new three-judge panel, court decisions require the signatures of all three to achieve a majority, but administrative issues can be resolved with two signatures. Lorenzetti wants to speed things up, but his colleagues are considering the matter.
The Court is also analyzing the presidential decree that appointed Lijo and García-Mansilla There is still no detailed report from the specialized areas on the standard.
In its article 3, the presidential decree provides that The Court may conduct a “title review” of candidates before swearing them in That is, if all the preconditions for doing so are met, said a senior judge.
Strictly speaking, the text is brief but hides this power: “Those appointed on commission by this act, at the time of taking the oath in accordance with the provisions of article 112 of the National Constitution [before the president of the Court] must comply with the formalities for exercising the position.”
These formalities include, for example, considering whether Lijo will be granted leave and whether he can serve in the highest court as such. In the fine print of the decree, there were voices from the courts who sent a message to the Government: that the word “license” should not be mentioned there, but rather the more general formula “formalities for the exercise of the office.” , judicial sources told LA NACION.
Meanwhile, Justice Secretary Sebastián Amerio is speaking with court officials to convey Milei's wish that the judges be sworn in before Saturday.
“The Court will decide, we are waiting” , a government source told LA NACION. They trust in the Casa Rosada that “she will be sworn in at the end, because in the Court there are serious people, institutionalists, who do not seek to clash for the sake of clashing.” And they analyze that “there is no more time, it is two days. It must be quick, for or against.”
For now, the analysis that is being made in the courts is more political than legal, and that the text of the decree raises a conflict between the Executive Branch, which sent the document to the Senate, and the Legislative Branch, which did not give its approval.
This is what prevented the appointment of Lijo and García-Mansilla by the orthodox mechanism provided for in the National Constitution. They do not see, at least for now, that there is a confrontation with the Judiciary. The unanimous decision signed by the Federal Court that "grants" Lijo's request for leave of absence arrived at the Court at 4 p.m. and a file was created.
The brief text of the agreement took almost two hours of debate between judges Mariano Llorens, Eduardo Farah, Roberto Boico, Pablo Bertuzzi, Leopoldo Bruglia and Martín Irurzun . They discussed whether they should be the ones to grant Lijo the extraordinary license, whether it was the Supreme Court of Justice or the Council of the Judiciary.
They received reports with the background of similar but contradictory decisions. Finally, they found two consensus phrases: “to accommodate” Judge Lijo's request for temporary extraordinary leave, to assume a higher-ranking position. “Granting the request is not granting the license” , they explained in the Chamber.
They also defined "sending a copy of the proceedings" to the Supreme Court of Justice, so that it can intervene. The formula is so broad that the Court can intervene or not. They opened the door for him to intervene and with respect to the Council of the Judiciary, the verb they used was “to communicate” the decision. Quite different, just to inform them so that the Human Resources Office stops paying Lijo's federal judge salary.
The issues of federal judges' licenses are regulated by Court Decision 34 of 1977 and Decree 3413 of 1979, on the system of licenses for Public Administration. The Court Decision states that the Chamber is the one that grants licenses to federal judges (art. 2 subparagraph d), but extraordinary licenses of more than 6 months must be granted by the president of the Court (art. 33).
The decree on the leave regime for the public administration, which is applied in a supplementary manner, provides for unpaid leave in the case of the temporary exercise of other higher positions for the duration of the official's tenure in that position (Article 13, Part II).
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