Foreign Law Guide

FOREIGN LAW GUIDE

Researching the Law of Argentina

At a glance

Legal system family
Civil law, codified federally and applied locally. Article 75 of the Constitution has Congress enact the Civil, Commercial, Criminal, Mining and Labour and Social Security Codes, in unified or separate bodies, without those codes altering local jurisdictions. 1
Official gazette
Boletin Oficial de la Republica Argentina. Article 1 of Decreto 207/2016 gives its publication on the website the character of official and authentic, with the same legal effects as the printed edition. 2
Constitution in force
Constitucion de la Nacion Argentina as reformed in 1994, ordered published by Ley 24.430, sanctioned on 14 December 1994 and published in the Boletin Oficial of 10 January 1995 at issue 28057, page 1. 1
Language of the authoritative text
not established A federal provision naming the language of Argentine legislation. Neither the word idioma nor the word lengua occurs anywhere in the constitutional text as published under Ley 24.430, and no other federal provision on the point was found in the Ministry of Justice collection at argentina.gob.ar. The Secretaria Legal y Tecnica de la Presidencia, which runs the Direccion Nacional del Registro Oficial, is the body that would answer it.

The Argentine Constitution reaches its readers through an ordinary statute. Ley 24.430, sanctioned on 14 December 1994 and published in the Boletin Oficial of 10 January 1995 at issue 28057, page 1, orders the publication of the constitutional text as reformed that year. What a researcher cites for the Constitution is therefore a law with a number, in a gazette issue with a number and a page, and that is the shape of nearly every Argentine citation.

Article 75 of that text settles the shape of Argentine private law in a single paragraph. Congress enacts the Civil, Commercial, Criminal, Mining and Labour and Social Security Codes, in unified or separate bodies, without those codes altering local jurisdictions, and their application belongs to the federal or the provincial courts according to whether the things or the persons fall under one or the other. Codes federal, courts largely provincial. Anyone who finds the code and stops has half of what a case needs.

That paragraph was put to work in 2015. Ley 26.994 approved the Codigo Civil y Comercial de la Nacion in unified form, and its article 4 repealed the Codigo Civil approved by ley 340 and the Codigo de Comercio approved by leyes 15 and 2.637, keeping a short list of commercial articles that moved into the navigation act instead. Two nineteenth century codes became one modern code in one statute, and every treatise, form and precedent written against the old ones changed status overnight.

Article 6 of the same act is what saved all that older material. Every reference to the Civil Code or the Commercial Code contained in legislation in force is to be understood as referring to the new code. Argentine statutes that name the old codes did not have to be amended one by one, and a reader who meets such a reference in a statute passed in 1970 is not looking at a dead cross reference.

There is a trap on the government's own page, and it is the kind that produces a confident error. The text served for Ley 26.994 is labelled TEXTO ORIGINAL, and the commencement clause in that original text names 1 January 2016. What a researcher needs is the date on which the code actually began to apply, and the original text cannot supply it. The label sits at the top of the page and the commencement clause is a long way down. A date lifted from that view is the date in the act as passed, which is not always the date the act operated from.

Article 1 of the code itself is short and is quoted more than any other provision in it. Cases the code governs are to be resolved according to the statutes that apply, in conformity with the National Constitution and the human rights treaties the Republic is party to, and the purpose of the rule is to be taken into account. Usages, practices and customs are binding where a statute or the parties refer to them, or in situations not regulated by law, so long as they are not contrary to law. A civil code that opens by subordinating itself to treaties is making a point about where Argentine law now sits.

The Boletin Oficial became official on the internet by decree in 2016. Article 1 of Decreto 207/2016 gives the publication of the Boletin Oficial on its website the character of official and authentic, and the same legal effects as those of its printed edition. One sentence, and the printed edition stopped being the thing that mattered.

The recitals of that decree are worth as much as the article, because they show a government arguing itself into a change rather than announcing one. The electronic version already carried what the paper version published, and was already authentic and secured by the means the law required. The City of Buenos Aires and the Province of Salta had already given official validity to their own electronic publication. And the decree names Mexico, the United States, Spain and France as places where official publication by electronic means had worked. A national government building its case out of what two of its provinces and four foreign states had already done is a reminder that none of this felt inevitable at the time.

Nothing fills the language line above, and that belongs in the open rather than in a footnote. Neither the word idioma nor the word lengua occurs anywhere in the constitutional text as published under Ley 24.430, and no federal provision naming the language of Argentine legislation was found in the Ministry of Justice collection. The Boletin Oficial publishes in Spanish. That is a fact about practice, and this guide does not have a rule to cite for it.

The three documents this page rests on happen to show three Argentine drafting habits in one place. A constitutional text arrives inside an ordinary law that orders it published. A gazette becomes authentic by presidential decree, with several paragraphs of reasoning printed above a single operative article. And a code is enacted by an act whose first articles do nothing but repeal, preserve and redirect, so that the code itself does not begin until article 1 of an annex a long way down the page. In none of the three can the wrapper be skipped.

Primary sources online

SOURCES

  1. Ley 24.430, ordering the publication of the Constitucion Nacional as reformed in 1994. Ministerio de Justicia de la Nacion, Argentina.gob.ar. https://www.argentina.gob.ar/normativa/nacional/norma-804/texto. Accessed 2026-08-30. The constitutional text reaches the reader through an ordinary statute ordering its publication: Ley 24.430, sanctioned on 14 December 1994 and published in the Boletin Oficial of 10 January 1995, issue 28057, page 1. Article 75 paragraph 12 has Congress enact the Civil, Commercial, Criminal, Mining and Labour and Social Security Codes, in unified or separate bodies, without those codes altering local jurisdictions, and leaves their application to the federal or provincial courts according to where things or persons fall. Neither the word idioma nor the word lengua occurs anywhere in the text as served here.
  2. Decreto 207/2016, on the official character of the Boletin Oficial website. Ministerio de Justicia de la Nacion, Argentina.gob.ar. https://www.argentina.gob.ar/normativa/nacional/norma-257958/texto. Accessed 2026-08-30. One operative article and a set of recitals that are worth as much as the article. The publication of the Boletin Oficial on its website has the character of official and authentic and produces the same legal effects as the printed edition. The recitals give the reasoning: the electronic version already carried what the paper version published and was authentic and secured; the City of Buenos Aires and the Province of Salta had already given official validity to electronic publication; and the decree names Mexico, the United States, Spain and France as international precedents.
  3. Ley 26.994, approving the Codigo Civil y Comercial de la Nacion, original text. Ministerio de Justicia de la Nacion, Argentina.gob.ar. https://www.argentina.gob.ar/normativa/nacional/norma-235975/texto. Accessed 2026-08-30. Trimmed extract of a page of 1,292,434 bytes. Article 4 repeals the Codigo Civil approved by ley 340 and the Codigo de Comercio approved by leyes 15 and 2.637, keeping a list of commercial articles that move into the navigation act. Article 6 directs every reference to either old code in legislation in force to be read as a reference to the new one. Article 1 of the code itself makes the cases it governs turn on the applicable statutes read in conformity with the Constitution and the human rights treaties the Republic is party to, and makes usages, practices and customs binding where a statute or the parties refer to them or where a situation is not regulated by law. The page is served under the label TEXTO ORIGINAL, quoted above from the breadcrumb the window was widened to include, and the commencement date in article 7 is the one the act carried when it was passed.

Reviewed 2026-08-30. 3 sources cited on this page.