The Secretary of Justice, Sebastián Amerio, stated today that the government seeks to provide the business sector with 'legal security' by approving 'very important reforms in labor, tax, and social security matters'. He also maintained that rulings from the Supreme Court must be of 'mandatory application'.
To achieve legal security, the official opined that 'the first and foremost thing is to fill the vacancies in the Justice system, which has a 35 or 36 percent vacancy rate, especially in the labor jurisdiction, which is so closely related to the issue, and in the commercial jurisdiction'.
'We are going to do something that no other government has done, which is to appoint those who won the competitions in the Council of the Magistrature, but appointing the one who came in first, second, and third, not the one in 24th place,' Amerio expressed while speaking at the 31st. Conference of the Argentine Industrial Union (UIA).
'That is legal insecurity,' he pointed out.
Amerio highlighted that by appointing the best-evaluated candidates in each competition, a person who 'technically is the best and who did not need political force or favoritism to get to the position and will not be trapped in that' will be appointed.
He explained that in this way, since the new judge is 'the most suitable person, they have independence, a concept tied to legal security', and with which he considered that it will also be possible to 'demonstrate to the world that this government is not attacking judicial independence'.
'We do not alter the work of judges. The President has never manifested anything against the Justice system and has not appointed judges, something that a lot of previous presidents we have had cannot say,' he emphasized.
Amerio said that 'to give legal security, the reforms in labor, tax, and social security matters that are being analyzed are very important, and although it is not so closely tied to legal security, also the presentation of the new Penal Code'.
He asserted that 'predictability allows entrepreneurs and SMEs to know that when they go to a labor trial, it doesn't matter the Chamber (of Appeals) that you get, it doesn't matter the judge, the margins of how a sentence can come out are predictable, with a floor and a ceiling where one can speculate with the costs' in case of losing.
Finally, Amerio emphasized that 'at some point a reform must be made so that the rulings of the Supreme Court, the last interpreter of the National Constitution, are mandatory'.
'Last year the Supreme Court issued two rulings in which it limited compensatory interest in labor matters, and a Chamber of Appeals did not follow that criterion and modified the sentence again.'
