Gatekeeping and Concealment: Legal Knowledge in the Gap

LETICIA BARRERA

Keele, Straffordshire

Workshop; Justice, Documents and Affect; 2014

Keele University Law School

This article provides a detailed look at the means through which the Argentine Supreme Court of Justice decides what cases to review and what cases to discard; a mechanism that, it is argued, borrows from the United States Supreme Court?s writ of certiorari. The essay does not draw a comparative analysis between how the practice of the certiorari is performed in these two different jurisdictions. Nor it points point out the alleged gap between the original practice and the imported one. Rather, it engages in an ethnographic study of a Court´s documentary practice to elaborate on the forms, meanings and effects of gatekeeping in the Argentine Court and the relations of knowledge that this practice manifests. In examining the instances of knowledge disclosure and enclosure that the operation of gatekeeping unfolds, this essay ultimately seeks to point out a particular mode of building up judicial authority in contemporary Argentina.