
This essay seeks to show the effects of meaning that inhabit the discourse of constitutional law in Argentina when it comes to qualifying political events as constitutional or arbitrary. For this purpose, we will use the theory of the ghost in Lacan’s lessons, which serves to specify the function of the –narrated– images of caudillismo and the popular in legal interpretation. This will allow us to determine the role played by the ghostly frameworks developed in the nineteenth century when they are shared by an epistemic community not only for understanding the past, but also for judging the present cases submitted to its interpretation.