The autonomy of National Universities in the Argentine constitutional system. Analysis of competences and the hierarchy of norms in the field of higher education

Abstract

The 1994 constitutional reform enshrined the autonomy and autarchy of national universities in the text of the National Constitution. Before the reform, it was generally held that national universities enjoyed only autarchy. As a result of the 1994 reform, the challenge is to define the scope of the question, every time the constitution does not make explicit the significance of the autonomy of the national universities, nor the set of competences that result from it. However, the autonomy presents the problem of indeterminate legal concepts, in the sense that their limits are not precisely specified in the constitutional enunciation. To this difficulty is added the normative fact that, at the same time, the Congress of the Nation has the faculty to dictate laws in matters of higher education. Against this backdrop, it can be seen that university autonomy must coexist with the powers of the legislative body, and vice versa. In this work I propose to delimit the scope and range of the legal norms that correspond to sanction the National Congress by virtue of the competence attributed by article 75, paragraph 19. I also investigate the statutory norms that correspond to dictate to the national universities due to the autonomy recognized in the constitutional provision itself, as well as its location in the legal system.