Organization

The Argentine Supreme Court (Corte Suprema de Justicia de la Nación) stands at the head of a federal judiciary currently composed of a total of 343 first-instance courts (juzgados), 42 oral tribunals (tribunales orales), and 24 appeals courts (cámaras). Article 94 of the 1853 Constitution establishes that the number of lower courts shall be determined by Congress. The organization of the federal courts is regulated by decree law 1285/58, which specifies the areas of specialization for each of the various tribunals. Currently, the lower federal courts are divided into separate tribunals for administrative law (Fuero Contensiosa Administrativa and Fuero Federal de la Seguridad Social), criminal law (Fuero Criminal y Correccional Federal, Fuero Penal Oral Federal de la Capital Federal, Fuero Penal Oral Federal del Interior), civil and commercial law (Fuero Civil y Comercial Federal), and electoral law (Fuero Electoral). The twenty-four Federal Courts of Appeals are located in fifteen of the country's twenty-three provinces.

Jurisdiction and Precedent

The jurisdiction and powers of the federal courts are determined by the Constitution of 1853 – recently reformed in 1994 – the Congress, and through the Supreme Court's own jurisprudence. The Constitution's Articles 94, 100, 101, and 67, section 11, regulate the jurisdiction of the federal judiciary. As in the United States, the main task of the Argentine federal courts is to resolve all “federal questions,” which includes all questions of interpretation that emerge from laws passed by the Congress and cases whereby a right of the Constitution has been allegedly violated (Miller et al. et al. 1995: 411; Molinelli et al. 1999).