The Argentine Constitution was adopted in 1853 after years of domestic turmoil which ended with the defeat of Juan Manuel de Rosas, an authoritarian caudillo from the Province of Buenos Aires, by Justo José de Urquiza y García. This Constitution, with the amendments that will be explained below, still remains in force.

It is a matter of pride for the Argentine Foreign Affairs Ministry and especially for the National Foreign Service under my direction, to give you a very warm welcome and to be able to host the 33rdCourse on International Law and Legal Information organized by the prestigious International Association of Law Libraries (IALL).

Good afternoon. I would like to thank the International Association of Law Libraries, the organizing committee and especially Gloria Orrego Hoyos for the invitation. It is a real pleasure and honor for me to be here.

Today I will talk about the influence of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in the rulings of Argentina's Supreme Court. I will focus particularly on the importance that the Argentinian Supreme Court gave to the Inter-American Court in the most significant decisions during the process of reopening cases of crimes against humanity.

The international law of human rights is a set of standards that each day increases the sphere of protection of our rights. But, how does one build a space of this nature? The response includes various actors: families and victims reporting and crying for justice, Human rights defenders, legal practitioners, government officials, international civil servants, academics, independent experts, among others.

The area of Research at the Research Institute and Foreign Reference of the Supreme Court of Justice has developed two scientific research programs during the past five years which we want to mention and comment on briefly. Both investigations were proposed, directed and supervised by Dr. Eugenio Raul Zaffaroni, one of the Supreme Court Justices on whom the whole structure depends.