Más allá del azul

This article analyzes “SIPOBA”, a 2017 majority decision by Argentina’s Supreme Court. The ruling denied police officers the right to form a union. The majority opinion rested on a restrictive reading of constitutional rights, based on speeches at the 1957 constitutional convention. In addition to that, the majority upheld suppressing the police officers’ freedom of association by means of a local Executive decree, in spite of an Inter-American Court of Human Rights advisory opinion. Dissenters, on the contrary, ruled that local decree unconstitutional, while embracing the Inter-American Court’s construction of applicable clauses from the American Convention on Human Rights. A recent case on correctional officers’ request to form a union is also analyzed. This article critically reviews arguments used by the majority and the dissents in both cases, in order to identify interpretation patterns and to single out which of those arguments can be used in future cases on social rights.