11/03/2020 17:47
Clarín.com
Politics
Updated 11/03/2020 5:47 PM
After five weeks of analysis, since the Court admitted the
per saltum
appeal
to take into its hands the demand of the judges Leopoldo Bruglia, Pablo Bertuzzi and Germán Castelli to reverse the annulment of their transfers to the Buenos Aires Federal Chamber and the Court Oral Federal 7, this Tuesday the highest court endorsed those transfers, but only until their positions are filled by their permanent holders through background contests organized by the Council of the Magistracy and the presidential appointment after the Senate's agreement.
Here, the keys to the sentence signed by Ricardo Lorenzetti, Horacio Rosatti, Juan Carlos Maqueda and Elena Highton, with the dissent of Carlos Rosenkrantz:
The judges will not return to their positions, but only temporarily.
The Court ended up likening their situation to that of surrogate magistrates - that is, alternates - until the positions they occupy are definitively filled after new competitions organized by the Council of the Magistracy, in agreement with the Senate and a presidential appointment.
The opposite, said the Court, "affects the independence of the Judiciary.
These competitions must be called from scratch, open competitions cannot be extended - for the Federal Chamber there is a process almost finished to fill two vacancies - adding the positions that Bruglia and Bertuzzi will make available.
Both can participate in these contests.
The making of shortlists of candidates to occupy a position in the justice must be approved with two thirds of the votes of the Council of the Magitratura, that is, 9 out of 13.
The regulations for the transfer of judges, which had been approved in 2000 and amended this year by the Council of the Magistracy - a reform that was later applied retroactively for Bruglia, Bertuzzi, Castelli and other transferred judges - was declared unconstitutional.
From now on, governments will not be able to transfer judges indiscriminately.
The Court urged Congress to regulate these transfers through law.
The legal acts sentenced by Bruglia, Bertuzzi and the other transferred judges who, as they are replaced through new competitions, leave the positions they occupy until now, will be valid.
The Court "recommends" to the Council of the Magistracy to "carefully analyze existing situations and avoid or suspend the promotion of new transfers."
The conversion of the transfers of judges into "transitory" will return Bruglia, Bertuzzi, Castelli -if the Court repeats with him this week the criteria that it applied to the other two magistrates- and dozens of other judges transferred to their former destinations, but it is Some of them may already be occupied by other designated persons after a contest.
For now, Bruglia should return to TOF 4, and Bertuzzi - who had been transferred to that same TOF 4 by Cristina Kirchner - to a court in La Plata.