Manuel García-Mansilla was sworn in to Argentina’s Supreme Court on Thursday. He is one of two new Justices that President Javier Milei controversially named by decree, a move critics have blasted as unconstitutional.

The swearing-in ceremony was led by Supreme Court head Horacio Rosatti and attended by the other Justices, Carlos Rosenkrantz and Ricardo Lorenzetti.

Milei appointed García-Mansilla and fellow federal judge Ariel Lijo to cover two empty seats on the Supreme Court via an executive order on Tuesday. 

Per Argentina’s National Constitution, the president’s nominees for Supreme Court justices need to be approved by two thirds of the Senate to be appointed. The Senate is on summer recess until Saturday. 

The presidential communications team argued in a statement on Tuesday that the appointments were permitted because of provisions in the constitution that allow the president to fill roles that need senate approval if the senate is in recess. It states that the appointments will remain valid until the end of the next legislative period. 

Lijo’s appointment, in particular, has proved controversial because of his sluggish conviction rate. He is currently a judge at a federal criminal court in Buenos Aires, and took a leave of absence that was approved by the judiciary to avoid losing his existing role if the Senate ultimately rejects his appointment.

A Supreme Court press release said that the body has decided to address Lijo’s leave of absence and appointment on March 6. This suggests the Justices are yet to come to an agreement regarding Lijo’s situation.

In the release, the Supreme Court said that García-Mansilla’s appointment “complies with all the required formal steps.”

However, Milei’s decision to appoint García-Mansilla and Lijo has faced intense backlash throughout the week, even from political ally and former President Mauricio Macri, leader of the PRO party. “Empirical experience tells me that appointing judges through a mechanism such as the one used by the government is incorrect,” he wrote in an X post on Wednesday.

When he was president, Macri also appointed two Supreme Court judges — Rosenkrantz and Rosatti — via an executive order. In his case, the Senate later backed his appointees, although the move likewise faced heavy criticism at the time.

On Thursday, attorneys Andrés Gil Domínguez, Lucía Spagnolo and Soledad Deza filed a complaint before the Supreme Court saying that the decree should be annulled and declared unconstitutional because it “did not comply with the exceptionality requirements” for a president to name judges by decree. They also requested García-Mansilla and Lijo’s appointments be put on hold until the judicial body has ruled on their complaint.