The Supreme Court of Argentina (Corte Suprema de Justicia de la Nación) is the country’s highest judicial body and the final interpreter of the National Constitution. It is a five-member tribunal that reviews federal laws, executive actions, and provincial court rulings against the Constitution of 1853, as revised in 1994. Its authority is split between a narrow set of cases that start directly at the court and a broad appellate role over federal questions decided below.
Who Sits on the Court
The Constitution does not fix the number of justices. It simply vests judicial power in “a Supreme Court and in such lower courts as Congress may constitute.”1Congreso de la Nación Argentina. National Constitution – Section 108 Congress has changed the size more than once, expanding the bench from five to seven in 1960 and later reducing it back to five.
As of early 2025, the five seats are held by Horacio Rosatti (who serves as president of the court), Carlos Rosenkrantz, Ricardo Lorenzetti, Ariel Lijo, and Manuel García-Mansilla.
Qualifications
Section 111 of the Constitution requires each justice to be a licensed lawyer with at least eight years of legal practice and to meet the qualifications of a senator.2Congreso de la Nación Argentina. National Constitution – Section 111 Those senatorial qualifications, found in Section 55, include being at least 30 years old, having been an Argentine citizen for at least six years, and either being native to the relevant province or having resided there for at least two years.3Congreso de la Nación Argentina. National Constitution – Section 55
How Justices Are Appointed
Under Section 99, clause 4, the President nominates each justice, and the Senate must approve the nominee by a two-thirds vote of the members present during a public session called for that purpose.4Congreso de la Nación Argentina. National Constitution – Section 99, Clause 4 That high threshold is meant to force the executive toward candidates with broad political support.
Decree 222/03 layers additional transparency onto the process. Vacancies must be advertised publicly, candidates must file sworn asset declarations, and any individual, NGO, professional association, or institution can submit comments or objections to the Ministry of Justice. The President keeps final authority over whether to proceed and is not legally obliged to explain a decision to move forward over public objections.5International Commission of Jurists. Attacks on Justice – Argentina
The 2025 Decree Appointments
The two most recent appointments to the court are legally contested. In February 2025, President Javier Milei issued Decree 137/2025, appointing Ariel Lijo and Manuel García-Mansilla without obtaining the two-thirds Senate approval that Section 99 requires. The decree followed the administration’s failure to secure the necessary majority through normal procedures. A United Nations independent expert publicly criticized the move, warning it “sets a dangerous precedent by politicising appointments, eroding transparency, and limiting avenues for public scrutiny.”6United Nations OHCHR. Argentina – UN Expert Concerned by Appointment of Supreme Court Judges by Presidential Decree Multiple legal challenges seeking to annul the decree are underway, and the court itself has indicated it will assess the decree’s constitutionality. The matter remains unresolved.
What the Court Has Power to Decide
The Constitution divides the court’s authority into two tracks: original jurisdiction, where cases begin directly at the Supreme Court, and appellate jurisdiction, where it reviews rulings from lower courts.
Original Jurisdiction
Section 117 grants the court original and exclusive jurisdiction over two categories of cases: those involving foreign ambassadors, public ministers, and consuls, and those in which a province is a party.7Congreso de la Nación Argentina. National Constitution – Section 117 These cases skip the lower courts entirely.
Appellate Jurisdiction
Everything else falls under appellate jurisdiction, subject to the regulations and exceptions Congress sets. Section 116 extends federal judicial power to all cases arising under the Constitution, federal laws, and international treaties, as well as cases involving the national government, disputes between provinces, and disputes between residents of different provinces.8Congreso de la Nación Argentina. National Constitution – Section 116 Through this appellate power the court reviews decisions from federal appellate courts and from the highest courts of individual provinces when a federal constitutional question is at stake, keeping national law uniform across Argentina’s 23 provinces and the autonomous city of Buenos Aires.
How a Case Reaches the Court
The ordinary route up is the recurso extraordinario federal, established by Article 14 of Law 48. It is not a general right to a second look. It is a narrow filter.
Article 14 authorizes an appeal from a final decision of a provincial superior court in three situations:
- The validity of a federal treaty, law, or national authority was challenged and the lower court ruled against that validity.
- A provincial law or act was challenged as conflicting with the Constitution, federal treaties, or federal statutes, and the lower court sided with the province.
- A party claimed a right based on the Constitution, a treaty, or federal law, and the lower court ruled against that claim.9Infoleg. Ley 48 – Articulo 14
Beyond those substantive grounds, the court’s Acordada 4/2007 lays out the formal conditions a petition must meet. The appeal must target a final judgment from the highest available court in the case. The petitioner must clearly identify the federal questions involved, cite the relevant constitutional or statutory provisions, and demonstrate a direct connection between those provisions and the outcome challenged.10Infoleg. Corte Suprema de Justicia de la Nacion – Acordada 4/2007 If a party still has an available appeal in a lower court, the Supreme Court will reject the petition. Most failed appeals stumble on this exhaustion requirement.
Per Saltum
A case can occasionally leap straight to the Supreme Court from a trial court, bypassing every intermediate appellate level. This mechanism, known as per saltum, is codified in Articles 257 bis and 257 ter of the National Code of Civil and Commercial Procedure. It is reserved for situations of extreme institutional gravity or urgency where waiting for the normal appellate climb would cause irreparable harm. Once any intermediate court has intervened, per saltum is procedurally unavailable. The court rarely grants these petitions; in May 2026, for example, it rejected the government’s per saltum request in a major labor reform case, finding the procedural requirements unmet.
Discretionary Rejection
Even when a petition qualifies formally, the justices can still turn it away. Article 280 of the Code of Civil and Commercial Procedure allows the court to dismiss a recurso extraordinario, without a detailed explanation, if it finds the federal grievance insufficient, the issues insubstantial, or the case lacking broader legal significance. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has noted cases where petitioners’ appeals were rejected under Article 280 as a final domestic step before they pursued international remedies.11Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Report No. 39/99, Petition Mevopal, S.A., Argentina Combined with the strict requirements of Law 48 and Acordada 4/2007, this gatekeeping power means only a small fraction of filed appeals reach a full hearing on the merits.
How Rulings Are Made and What They Bind
A valid ruling requires an absolute majority of the bench. On a five-member court that means at least three justices must agree on both the outcome and the legal reasoning. When they disagree, justices issue separate concurring or dissenting opinions. Complex constitutional cases can take months or years to resolve.
Once the court issues a ruling, no domestic body can overturn it. The decision is final within Argentina’s legal system. The only layer beyond is the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which can review whether Argentina has complied with its obligations under the American Convention on Human Rights, though those rulings still require domestic implementation to take practical effect inside the country.
Argentina is a civil law country and does not formally follow the common law doctrine of binding precedent. A lower court judge is not legally required to follow a prior Supreme Court ruling. In practice, lower courts overwhelmingly do. A judge who departs from established Supreme Court doctrine risks reversal on appeal and is generally expected to give substantial justification for the departure, so consistent rulings over time acquire a weight that functions much like binding precedent even without that formal label.
Tenure, Removal, and Ethics
Justices hold their seats during good behavior, which in practice means life tenure absent impeachment or voluntary resignation. One age-linked mechanism applies: a justice appointed after turning 75 needs fresh Senate confirmation and serves a renewable five-year term rather than an indefinite one.
Removal happens through impeachment (juicio político). The Chamber of Deputies holds the exclusive power to bring charges against a justice for poor performance, crimes committed in office, or ordinary criminal offenses, and a two-thirds vote of Deputies present is required to authorize those charges. The case then moves to the Senate for a public trial, where conviction and removal require a two-thirds vote of senators present.12Constitute Project. Argentina 1853 (Reinst. 1983, Rev. 1994) – Article 59 The process has been used successfully only a handful of times in the court’s history.
The Public Ethics Law (No. 25.188) requires all members of the judiciary to file sworn asset declarations within 30 days of taking office and annually thereafter. Declarations must cover all domestic and foreign property, investments, bank deposits, and the assets of a spouse or partner and minor children. The core of each declaration is publicly accessible on request, while sensitive financial details such as specific bank account information are filed in a sealed envelope that can be opened only in a corruption investigation.
The Court and the Judicial Council
The 1994 constitutional reform created the Consejo de la Magistratura (Judicial Council) and shifted several administrative functions away from the Supreme Court. The Council now manages the judiciary’s budget, participates in selecting lower federal judges, and exercises disciplinary authority over them. The Supreme Court retains authority over its own internal operations and continues to issue acordadas, which are binding administrative regulations that govern procedural matters for the entire federal court system, including the formal filing requirements for extraordinary appeals. The division of authority between the court and the Council has itself been a recurring source of institutional friction, with the court occasionally weighing in on the constitutionality of laws that restructure the Council’s composition.