Search

This paper analyzes constitutional design as it pertains to the powers, composition, selection procedures, and duration of the mandate of supreme courts and constitutional tribunals in 17 Latin American countries between 1900 and 2009. The analysis is based on an original database that contains the text of all constitutional articles in the central organs of the judiciary. The paper relies on this information to demonstrate to what degree the job stability of magistrates can be explained in terms of the institutional conditions that regulate the judicial system. Our analysis emphasizes that the survival of magistrates is determined by the stability of the constitutional framework, rather than any specific legal content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the constitution of the area of studies on the history and development of political science in Latin America over the past ten years. Several studies have been proposed to account for this process showing the growth of the discipline in the region. In this paper we will highlight the main actors and their scientific and academic production, as well as the processes of institutionalization and professionalization of political science. This article aims to classify these studies from the early exploratory approaches up to the production of more sofisticated descriptive works, from a comparative perspective, in order to finally arrive at the new current trends that attempt to perform a “metatheoretical" approach with contributions from epistemology, sociology of knowledge and the history of the science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper--part of a major research which has as objective the philosophy of legal colonialism in Latin America--is dedicated to examine the relationship between indigenism, revolutionary democracy, and counter-constitutional discourse, within the contemporary age in the Latin American context. Our main source is fictional literature, for it is an important constituent of the external legal culture. But it also takes account of the recent constitutional reforms in Bolivia and Ecuador. The methodology is exploratory and it has a critical point of view of the primary and secondary sources. For the reasons explained above, the results are partial, though they are essential to define the legal colonialism and to describe the challenges they expounded to Latin America legal culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an analysis of the Judgment of the Colombian Constitutional Court SC-931/2009, by which the Court declares inhibited to fail in a case review of the constitutionality of the Law of May 21, 1851, with which slavery was definitively abolished in Colombia. The present interest in this case is that it demonstrates once again and from a specific case, the scope of judicial guarantee-ism under the consolidation of the constitutional state, accepted paradigm in Latin America from the issuance of the constitutions of the decade of the nineties, which have resulted in the development of the new Latin American constitutionalism. Furthermore, together with the presentation of the particular case, we were interested in noting the educational work being done by the Court, resorting even to literary analysis, giving a clear example of integration of disciplines in the process of judicial protection, in addition highlighting their influence in the formulation of laws and public policies for the protection of historically discriminated groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Constitutionalism is not a Latin American creation, but rather a European and American import. Its implantation throughout these region has been particularly difficult, as shown by the fact that in two centuries of independence, they produced over 200 constitutional texts. This paper gives an analysis of some historical causes of this constitutional instability in Latin America. It also shows how constitutionalism has brought about a number of significant results In the region nonetheless, despite the divorce which often exists between the real and the apparent constitution, and the general lack of confidence in Constitutions. A particular importance is ascribed to Constitutional Litigation Law, whose institutions are in force and are respected in countries where the social legitimacy of Constitutions is rather slight. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper is a bibliographical overview which constitutes the author's first document presented for his PhD in Law from the Universidad Javeriana. It presents the latest studies on formalisation and judicialisation of arbitration in some legal systems in Latin America. For this purpose, it will deal with matters such as the definition of the legal nature of arbitration, monism and dualism in legislative structures, the constitutionalisation of the figure and phenomenon of judicial intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ecuador's new Constitution is the first in Latin America to have a biocentric perspective. It introduces the concept of Nature's rights together with the right to ecological restoration. It promotes a new articulation with traditional knowledge by referring to both Nature and Pachamama. And it provides a framework to base environmental policies and management on an Andean perspective of the good life (sumak kawsay) and new kinds of development strategies. This paper describes and analyzes these new features from the perspective of political ecology and environmental ethics. It examines the impact of the concept of intrinsic value and offers a series of future challenges in field of politics and management. The biocentric turn represents an alternative to modernity, making it possible to value Nature, and articulate it with indigenous knowledge, in new ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the objective of this research paper is to reflect on the impact that the appearance and development of International Human Rights Law has had on the functioning of different national law systems, specifically in Latin America, and to identify some of the interesting and demanding challenges, both theoretical and practical, that this phenomenon poses to the world of law. In the analysis of these transformations, some of the questions addressed are: the juridical grounding of the former; the complex task of how to harmonize, both political and legally, the national and international instances; some practical and operative problems that have appeared with the rise of the international courts that specialise in these issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]