Essay on the Logic of the Case.
2026 Update.

Law: Contemporary Approach and Analysis

1. Legal synthesis and an approach to logical reasoning

Public instruments, according to Article 290 of the Civil and Commercial Code of the Nation (CCyC Nación), enjoy a presumption of authenticity regarding the facts that the public official enunciates as fulfilled by them or before them, until they are declared false in civil or criminal trial (art. 296, inc. a, CCyC Nación). Such presumption constitutes a pillar of legal certainty and trust in the fiduciary function of the State.

On the basis of this premise, this essay examines a real case that occurred between 2008 and 2011 in the Judicial Department of San Martín (Province of Buenos Aires), in which an insurmountable contradiction arose between two acts of public officials: on the one hand, the act of a Notifying Officer certifying the delivery of copies of a procedural transfer (public instrument with public faith of perception); on the other, a report from the Court Clerk stating the opposite (act with mere public faith of relation, lacking direct perception of the facts), without any impeachment against the notifier's public instrument.

The central issue, from a logical point of view, is the following: if the legal system grants full faith to the notifier's act (art. 290, CCyC Nación) —because it is a public instrument with public faith of perception over facts fulfilled in their presence—, and such faith can only be destroyed through the path of rebuttal of fraud (art. 296, CCyC Nación) when it comes to the substantive legal business, or through the incident of nullity (art. 149 CPCCBA Law 15,240) when it comes to procedural acts, then affirming that the same procedural act is not accredited (as the Court Clerk's report did, which only has public faith of relation) violates the principle of non-contradiction, according to which a proposition and its negation cannot both be true at the same time and in the same sense. Consequently, at least one of the two official acts is incompatible with objective legal truth.

2. Reasoning, predicates, and the extension or scope of those predicates

Judicial reasoning can be understood as a logical process that, starting from normative and factual premises, arrives at a conclusion. As Ariel C. Ariza points out, the sentence constitutes a point of "intersection between individual decision and system", where the science of Private Law and jurisprudence maintain constant communication. This dynamic perspective demands that the judge's reasoning be coherent, contrastable, and respectful of elementary logical rules.

The fundamental predicate
In the current normative framework, we can formulate the following predicate (conceptualization):

"Every public instrument, to be deprived of its presumption of authenticity, must be impeached through the suitable procedural path: rebuttal of fraud (art. 393 CPCCBA Law 15,240) if it documents the substantive legal business, or incident of nullity (art. 149 CPCCBA Law 15,240) if it is a procedural act".

This predicate applies to "all" public instruments (dictum de omni). That is, what is valid for the genus (public instruments) is valid for each of its species, including the acts of notifying officers (art. 289, inc. b, CCyC Nación). The suitable procedural path to impeach these instruments depends on what aspect is being attacked: if the veracity of the facts perceived by the public official is questioned (public faith of perception, art. 290 CCyC Nación), the incident of rebuttal of fraud corresponds (art. 393 CPCCBA Law 15,240); if a formal vice of the procedural act is impeached, the incident of nullity corresponds (art. 149 CPCCBA Law 15,240). The jurisprudence of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Province of Buenos Aires has been categorical in sustaining that "what is expressed by the Notifying Officer in their report makes full faith and can only be attacked through rebuttal of fraud" (Summary B5056606, CC0000 NE 180 95 (R) I 06/11/2008).

Extension or scope of the predicate
The extension of the first predicate («must be impeached through the suitable path») encompasses all public instruments. On the contrary, the extension of the predicate «must not be impeached to remove its presumption of authenticity» is, in the Argentine normative system, empty: there is no public instrument that can be deprived of its presumption of veracity without the contradictory due process. As Mario Bunge taught, the extension of a predicate is determined by the set of individuals that fulfill the defined property; when said set is null, the predicate has no possible empirical reference within the considered theory or system.

3. Application of the law of "double negation"

Classical propositional logic (see, for example, Rudolf Carnap) establishes the principle of double negation: "¬¬p ≡ p" (the negation of the negation of a proposition is equivalent to the original proposition). Let us apply this principle to the examined case.

Symbolic formalization
Let p = "Every public instrument must be impeached through the suitable path to remove its presumption of authenticity".
Let q = "The impeachment is carried out through rebuttal of fraud (art. 393 CPCCBA Law 15,240) if it documents the substantive legal business, or incident of nullity (art. 149 CPCCBA Law 15,240) if it is a procedural act".
The norm establishes the conditional proposition: p ⇒ q (if it is a public instrument, then it must be impeached in due form).

Suppose now that, in the concrete case, the court had affirmed ¬q ("it must not be impeached" or "it can be disregarded without impeachment"). From this, ¬p would follow ("it is not —or no— public instrument"). But since the act of the notifying officer is, unquestionably, a public instrument (p is true), then ¬q is false. By the law of double negation, ¬¬q ≡ q, whereby q is demonstrated: it corresponds to demand the impeachment in due form.

This reasoning, of elementary logical simplicity, puts in evidence the inconsistency of any judicial decision that, without mediation of impeachment in due form, disregards the probatory efficacy of a public instrument.

4. A rational choice

Before a contradiction between two acts of public officials (the notifier's act and the Court Clerk's report), the only rational way out is to discard at least one of the contradictory propositions. In the case, the public instrument that enjoys public faith of perception (the notifier's act, art. 290 CCyC Nación) was not impeached according to the provisions of art. 296 of the CCyC Nación, since the plaintiff did not promote the rebuttal of fraud against the notifier nor the incident of nullity against their act.

On the other hand, the report of the Court Clerk does not enjoy the same presumption of veracity. The Court Clerk only has public faith of relation (certifies what exists in the file) and public faith of collation (certifies that a copy is faithful to the original), but does not have public faith of perception over facts they did not witness. As Mario A. Zinny taught, the judgments of officials do not produce public faith; only intersensory perceptions (sight and hearing) generate it. In the present case, the Court Clerk was not limited to certifying the return of the processed writ with a writing (a fact passed in their presence). In their report, they affirmed, without having participated in the act of notification, that copies of the complaint had been accompanied, thus contradicting the public faith of perception of the notifier's act. Therefore, the contradiction should have been resolved giving prevalence to the presumption of authenticity of the notarial act, instead of taking for granted a judgment of the court clerk lacking public faith of perception.

As Ariel Ariza highlights, the rationality of the judicial decision is not exhausted in the formal respect to the law, but demands a justification that is coherent, contrastable with the objective records of the case and adequate to the body of pertinent knowledge (applicable regulations, general principles of law, and rules of logic). Substituting a problem of law (quaestio juris) —determining if the public instrument was validly impeached— for a question of fact (quaestio facti) —deciding which version of the facts is preferred without a due process— constitutes a logical and legal error that affects the legitimacy of the justice service.

Procedural corollary: From the perspective of impugnative paths, the error of the party in promoting an incident of rebuttal of fraud against the court clerk's report (instead of raising procedural nullity) did not justify the liminar rejection. According to the doctrine of Gloria L. Liberatore and the principle of ex officio re-channeling, built doctrinally and jurisprudentially on the principles of effective judicial protection (arts. 17 and 18 CN), procedural economy, and objective legal truth, as well as the ordering and instructing powers provided in Arts. 34 and 36 of the CPCCBA (Law 15,240) —which impose on the judge the duty to order the necessary diligences to clarify the truth and avoid the paralysis of the process—, and the prohibition of excessive formalisms that lead to denial of justice, the court has the duty to ex officio re-channel the claim towards the correct path, requiring the party to adapt their plea. This duty is imposed with greater reason when, as in the case, the question of fondo (the contradiction between the public instrument with public faith of perception and the judgment of the court clerk) has not been resolved, and when the action of the court clerk has violated the hierarchy of public faith (art. 290 CCyC Nación).

Consequently, the Administration of Justice of the Province of Buenos Aires has the duty to issue a pronouncement on the action of its agents and, in particular, to make effective the principle of objective legal truth (SCBA Agreement 3354, art. 5 inc. c), so that situations like the one analyzed here do not remain unpunished nor are repeated in the future.

📚 Links of interest, cited doctrine, and updated regulations

• Base article: "Public Faith, No Contradiction, and the Administration of Justice" (Real case updated 2026).
• Synthesis article: "Notarial Public Faith, Rebuttal of Fraud, and Procedural Nullity" (Doctrinal update 2026).
• Civil and Commercial Code of the Nation (CCyC Nación), arts. 289 to 312 (Public instruments).
• Civil and Commercial Procedural Code of the Province of Buenos Aires (Law 15,240), arts. 34, 36, 120, 135-151 (notifications), 149 (nullity), 238 and 241 (reconsideration), 248 (subsidiary appeal), 393 (rebuttal of fraud).
• SCBA Agreement 3354 (Disciplinary Regulation), art. 5 inc. c (objective legal truth).
• Ariza, Ariel C., "En torno al razonamiento judicial en Derecho Privado" (On judicial reasoning in Private Law), JA 2004-I-1038. (Work cited and analyzed in accordance with the right to quote of art. 10, Law 11,723).
• Bertolino, Pedro, La verdad jurídica objetiva (Objective Legal Truth), 2nd ed., LexisNexis, 2007. (Commented by Nicolás Guzmán in JA 2008-I-1418). (Work cited and analyzed in accordance with the right to quote of art. 10, Law 11,723).
• Bunge, Mario, Philosophical Dictionary, Prometheus Books, 2003; Diccionario de Filosofía, Siglo XXI, 2005. (Work cited in accordance with the right to quote of art. 10, Law 11,723).
• Camps, Carlos Enrique, Código Procesal Civil y Comercial de la Provincia de Buenos Aires (Anotado - Comentado - Concordado) (commentary on art. 36). (Work cited and analyzed in accordance with the right to quote of art. 10, Law 11,723).
• Carnap, Rudolf, Introduction to Symbolic Logic and Its Applications, Dover Publications, 1958. (Work cited in accordance with the right to quote of art. 10, Law 11,723).
• Liberatore, Gloria Lucrecia, "Nulidad de notificaciones y redargución de falsedad. Intervención del oficial público" (Nullity of notifications and rebuttal of fraud. Intervention of the public official), Sup. Doctrina Judicial Procesal 2009 (September), 74. (Work cited and analyzed in accordance with the right to quote of art. 10, Law 11,723).
• Provenzani Casares, Ariel E., "El 'silogismo judicial' y los 'argumentos de respaldo'" (The 'judicial syllogism' and the 'backing arguments'), APBA 2014-01-20. (Work cited and analyzed in accordance with the right to quote of art. 10, Law 11,723).
• Rivas, Adolfo A., "De las notificaciones y la redargución de falsedad" (On notifications and the rebuttal of fraud), LL 1993-A-518. (Work cited and analyzed in accordance with the right to quote of art. 10, Law 11,723).
• Zinny, Mario Antonio, "Falsedad ideológica" (Ideological falsehood), LL 2006-C-1032. (Work cited and analyzed in accordance with the right to quote of art. 10, Law 11,723).

Final note: The references to the real case, including the judicial providences and the names of the officials, have been anonymized or generalized to preserve the impartiality of the analysis and avoid personalizing the criticisms, without affecting the logical-legal rigor of the exposition.