Intelectuales y poder: la influencia de Carlos Nino en la presidencia de Alfonsín

Abstract

This article analyses the interaction between an intelectual and a politician in the period of Argentinian democratic transition between 1983 and 1989. The analysis is done with Carlos Nino’s infl uence, a distinguished lawyer and university professor, with a doctor’s degree issued by Oxford University, during Raul Alfonsin’s presidency. Both agreed that the democratic process that was being iniciated in 1983 meant a break from the previous political process and that a new rule of law should be established. The article’s aim is to solve how the president and the intelectual’s logic interact, the former one used to acting practically and pragmatically, the latter, used to thinking academically and from the philosophy of law, in an attempt to confront the abuses commited during the dictatorship and to ensure the protection of human rights towards the future. In order to fi nd an answer, the article uses oral and written sources and focuses on a non-frequent fact in Argentinian’s twentieth century history: that a politician gave space to an intelectual in the framework of his strategy for the defense of human rights, to which he assigned a fundamental importance.