The Role of Constitutional Courts in Intergovernmental Conflict Resolution: the Argentine Case

The constitutional and federal theory has debated about what are or what should be the safeguard mechanisms in modern federations, with two conflicting positions: the one that maintains that the mechanisms are essentially political (political safeguards), since the institutional design of the federal government is thought to guarantee an adequate representation of the subnational governments; while a second position holds that the judiciary, in general, and the supreme courts (or constitutional courts) in particular, are the bodies that stand as mechanisms tending to protect the federal system, based on the resolution of specific cases. This paper seeks to analyse what has been the position taken by the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation of the Argentine Republic in the resolution of (vertical and horizontal) intergovernmental conflicts, in particular, due to the emergence of a new jurisprudence that has taken certain importance in the last decade; the paper concludes that the Argentine Court has opted for an intermediate position, where it is recognized itself as an actor with institutional capacity to resolve intergovernmental conflicts, identifying, providing content and making effective the general constitutional principle of federalism, but at the same time, highlighting the importance of political mechanisms for the resolution of such conflicts, orienting, guiding and even exhorting the constituent actors to resolve conflicts through institutional dialogue and negotiations.