2013/14 Janey Annual Workshop: Emmanuel Guerisoli
Friday April 11th, 10am, History Conference Room 529
Janey Fellow Emmanuel Guerisoli presents his most recent work based on the 2013/2014 Janey Summer Fellowship he was awarded. See title and abstract below:
Emmanuel Guerisoli: The Exception to the Rule: Extra-Legality and Institution Building in Argentina
Abstract
This article explores the relationship between extra-legality and the processes of state formation and state preserving in Argentina. It will argue against the notion that legal institutions are exclusively generated and governed by the rule of law. Instead, it will be proposed that the exception and the extra legal power of the prerogative have been the legitimating grounds for many federal organizations and agencies in Argentina. Notwithstanding their extra legal nature, those institutions speak with a legal language, operate within a legal medium, and produce legal acts. They fulfill a double function: to build/expand and to preserve the state. Multiple intersections of extra-legality and legality govern those institutions, allowing them to accomplish both tasks. In this paper, it will be showed how extra legal acts or agencies established during moments of exception were later “legalized” and fully incorporated into the system of the rule of law: from the executive’s prerogative and decrees to the civil code and constitutional amendments. This legalization recognized that their legitimacy was founded beyond legality in a pre-constitutional substantive norm grounded on necessity and the people’s will. The article will investigate how this development took place within Argentinean constitutional history by relying on legal constitutional sources and doctrine, Supreme Court rulings, and executive decrees.