and civilian rule. Both new military and civilian regimes
picked their own justices. But picking Supreme Court
justices in Argentina was not an activity confined to
transitions between military and civilian rule. In 1990
Argentina finally experienced a transition between
democratically elected governments—one democratic
government followed by another. Yet, by this time
democratic governments did not behave much differently
from military ones when it came to the Supreme Court. The
incoming president was Carlos Saúl Menem of the
Perónist Party. The sitting Supreme Court had been
appointed after the transition to democracy in 1983 by the
Radical Party president Raúl Alfonsín. Since this was a
democratic transition, there should have been no reason for
Menem to appoint his own court. But in the run-up to the
election, Menem had already shown his colors. He
continually, though not successfully, tried to encourage (or
even intimidate) members of the court to resign. He
famously offered Justice Carlos Fayt an ambassadorship.
But he was rebuked, and Fayt responded by sending him a
copy of his book Law and Ethics , with the note “Beware I
wrote this” inscribed. Undeterred, within three months of
taking office, Menem sent a law to the Chamber of
Deputies proposing to expand the Court from five to nine
members. One argument was the same Roosevelt used in
1937: the court was overworked. The law quickly passed
the Senate and Chamber, and this allowed Menem to
name four new judges. He had his majority.
Menem’s victory against the Supreme Court set in
motion the type of slippery-slope dynamics we mentioned
earlier. His next step was to rewrite the constitution to
remove the term limit so he could run for president again.
After being reelected, Menem moved to rewrite the
constitution again, but was stopped not by Argentina
political institutions but by factions within his own Perónist
Party, who fought back against his personal domination.
Since independence, Argentina has suffered from most
of the institutional problems that have plagued Latin
America. It has been trapped in a vicious, not a virtuous,
circle. As a consequence, positive developments, such as
first steps toward the creation of an independent Supreme
Court, never gained a foothold. With pluralism, no group