Argentine Legal Digest

1. Background

To understand the Bill’s background it is important to point out that Law No. 24,967, enacted in 1998, set the principles and procedures to consolidate all national laws in force by means of preparing and approving the Argentine Legal Digest (the “Digest”).

Law No. 24,967 provided that the Digest should contain: (i) national general laws in force and their implementing regulations, (ii) an annex with laws that are not in force, and (iii) an annex with regulations enacted by supranational organisms of which Argentina is a member.

Regarding laws and implementing regulations not in force, Law No. 24,976 provides that they will be considered to be historical law with same legal value as the general principles of law, as provided by section 16 of the Civil Code.

Law No. 24,967 also set forth that the laws that constitute the Digest shall be identified with a letter according to the area to which they correspond. Law No. 24,967 provided the following areas of law: A) Administrative; B) Customs; C) Aeronautical - Space; D) Banking, Monetary and Financial; E) Civil; F) Commercial; G) Community; H) Constitutional; I) Communications; J) Diplomatic and Consular; K) Economic; L) Tax M) Industrial; N) Private International O) Public International; P) Labor; Q) Environment; R) Military; S) Criminal; T) Politic; U) Civil and Commercial Procedure; V) Criminal Procedure; W) Public Provincial and Municipal; X) Natural Resources; Y) Social Security; Z) Transportation and Insurance.

Law No. 24,967 also provided that the Digest should be prepared by the Executive Power by appointing a Jurist Committee.

Finally, Law No. 24,967 provided that all laws shall be renumbered, and that, upon the approval of the Digest, the laws that were not included in it would be construed as derogated. As from the passing of the Digest, all new enacted laws shall be automatically included in it.

2. The Bill

The approval of the Digest is an opportunity to have an organized list (by date of enactment) of in-force regulations and their amended texts.

The Bill approves Annex I with all in-force legislation and a list of the different laws grouped accordingly to the areas provided in Law. No. 24,967.

There are several issues in connection with Annex I that are worth mentioning or could be questioned. For example, the validity declaration of the old accounting law, approved by Law Decree No. 23,354, which was replaced by Decrees 436/2000 and 1023/2001 and by the Financial Administration Law No. 24,156, and currently only has 4 articles in force. In addition, it includes Supply Law No. 20,680 of arguable validity. Besides, it is noticeable that the regulations of in-force laws have not been included, when Law No. 24,967 expressly provides that the project should have included them.

On the other hand, there should be a series of documents attached to the Bill where the organized contents of in force laws are approved. Hopefully, this will clarify the situation mentioned in the paragraph above. We have not had complete access to these documents yet.

Approving the Digest would allow for clarification of the situation of different laws which delegated legislative powers in the Executive Branch before the constitutional reform of 1994 and that have expired, pursuant to the lack of congressional ratification.

Delegation of legislative powers is forbidden by section 76 of the Argentine Constitution and transitory clause No. 8 provides that “the pre-existent delegated legislation that does not contain an established deadline for its exercise will expire within 5 years as from the validity of this disposition, except the ones that the Congress expressively ratifies by a new law”.

Pursuant to transitory clause No. 8, the Congress enacted six laws that extended the validity of the legislative delegation. The last extension elapsed on August 24, 2010.

From that moment on, many doubts have arisen on the situation of different laws concerning the delegation of legislative powers that have not been formally repealed.

We were able to see the organized contents of the Customs Code, where the delegation of legislative powers to the Executive Branch in order to establish exportation duties -section 755, subsection a)- has not been eliminated and remains exactly the same (except for the change in the section number).

In this way, a regulation that could be construed as contrary to section 76 of the Constitution would be considered valid. Thus, a chance to clarify its situation would be wasted.

3. Final comment

We were not able to have access to the organized contents of all the laws considered in force by the Bill, however there is no doubt that the content of the annexes of the Bill and the follow-up of the upcoming events in Congress will be of great interest for several legal situations.