The dignity of the human person has as one of its sources the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which in 1948 established the following normative thesis in its article 1: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights and, endowed as they are with reason and conscience, they must behave fraternally.” It has constitutional hierarchy in Argentina since 1994.
Dignity involves granting recognition to every human being, and that each and every one has equality to exercise their life in freedom. Thus, the constitutional and democratic State, respectful and promoting the dignity of each human being, by the mere fact of being one, will grant and protect the immaculate possibility of millions, perhaps infinite, life plans. Human dignity could never be linked or linked to the market or private businesses; It is inherent in the humanity of the person, not in the negotiating probabilities. Every living existence of the human being must be protected, including the stage of his growing maturity. In the constitutional system of Argentina, since 2022, the Inter-American Convention on the Protection of the Human Rights of Older Persons; since 1957 the article 14 bis of its Constitution determines that the State undertakes to establish and grant “mobile retirements and pensions.”
In 1956, Ludwig von Mises, with profound irrationality and against all the thinking of the Illustration who sustains and develops our constitutional ideas, argued that it is an error to assume that nature has granted each individual a series of inalienable rights. Later he assumed that the standard of living of the average Western man was not achieved based on illusory disquisitions around a certain ethereal and inconcrete dignity of justice; It was achieved, on the contrary, thanks to the actions of “exploiters” and “gutless individualists.” The inhuman nature and known cruelty of the aforementioned demonstration can only constitute a source of authority for a society that denies freedom, equality and solidarity. Only those brutal ideas contrary to dignity and social justice can be assumed to destroy the assets of retirees and pensioners.
In Argentina, for example, the president can dictate “decrees for reasons of necessity and urgency (DNU).” I have already warned on several occasions that this is a “damned fact constitutionalized by the 1994 reform,” because it elevates the vast presidential powers to the nth degree. Keep in mind, however, that the president should not dictate a DNU whenever he feels like it; If that were the case, he would constantly violate the Constitution. The Supreme Court of Justice has held, by majority, that the text of the Constitution does not enable a discretionary choice between the sanction of a law or the more rapid imposition of certain material contents by means of a decree. Ergo, a DNU could almost never be issued, even though reality contradicts it.
The benefits to cover the contingencies associated with old age, with the respective retirements and pensions, constitute one of the main and inalienable commitments that the State must cover. The budget must include items to inevitably cover this State expenditure, which currently reaches and covers more than 7,000,000 people in Argentina. In a scandal of the division of powers, the president, together with his chief of staff and his ministers, through two DNUs “with legal status” (no. 70 of 12/20/2023 and no. 274 of 3/22/2024 , respectively), has drastically cut retirement benefits. This is a demolition of equity, solidarity, the priority to achieving an equivalent degree of development and quality of life and equal opportunities guaranteed by the Federal Constitution of the Republic (arts. 14 bis and 75, inc. 2 and 8). Thus, the existence of all retirees and pensioners becomes, unjustly, unworthy due to acts of the executive branch.
No extraordinary necessity creates or justifies the Law of the Constitution, the supreme rule of order. There is no supreme necessity that can be elevated or equated to the fundamental Law. Nothing has or should have a higher hierarchy than it as the Most High Law. Without a liturgical imprint: it would always be preferable not to hear the mass than to celebrate it in places where it should not be celebrated. The Fundamental Scripture is the only, exclusive, exclusive and inviolable “supreme law” for all legal authorizations in the constitutional State. Any authorization that the constituted powers attempt in manifest transgression of the regulations of the democratic Constitution will be insanely null, as happens arbitrarily and unjustly with human dignity and the separation of functions, pillars of the pillars.
