Book: Juicio a la desigualdad (Inequality on Trials)
News
Research methods in Private International Law - launch events
Following the publication of the book Research Methods in International Private Law: A Handbook on Regulation, Research and Teaching (Elgar, 2024), edited by Xandra Kramer and Laura Carballo Piñeiro (see our earlier news item), two launch events were held.
The first webinar took place on 10 September 2024. After a brief introduction by the editors, eminent contributors to the book presented their views on methods of regulation, research and education in private international law. Topics addressed included recognition as a method, European law perspectives, the essence of comparative law, law & economics, and feminism in private international law. The webinar is co-organised by the University of Vigo. Speakers were Dulce Lopes (University of Coimbra), Adriani Dori (Erasmus University Rotterdam), Diego P. Fernández Arroyo (Sciences Po Law School Paris), Giesela Rühl (Humboldt University of Berlin), and Mary Keyes (Griffith University of Brisbane).
The second webinar took place on 23 September 2024. This webinar will zoomed in on the importance and methodology of education in private international law, addressing general educational aspects from the perspective of laymen and colonialism as well as teaching private international law in different jurisdictions, including The Netherlands and Nigeria. This webinar was co-organised by the University of Vigo, the American Society of International Law (ASIL) and hosted by the University of Sydney (moderated by Jeanne Huang). Speakers were Veronica Ruiz Abou-Nigm (University of Edinburgh), Chukwuma Okoli (Birmingham Law School), Abubakri Yekini (University of Manchester), Ramani Garimella (South Asian University) and Aukje van Hoek (University of Amsterdam).
Published: September 23, 2021
Carlota Ucín has recently published this book, that is part of her PhD thesis. As she refers, Human Rights represent —today more than ever— a shared morality that guides us towards subsistence as cohesive communities. From this perspective, Public Interest Litigation becomes fundamental as a way of achieving the enforcement of these rights and to some extent, social change. This practice took shape in most of the countries of the so-called Global South after the latest constitutional reforms. It then emerged there as a body of lawsuits oriented by the Public Interest and tending to give effect to the social rights promised in the Constitutions but violated in practice. However, the phenomenon is not exclusive to these countries, and we are beginning to see signs of this in the so-called climate change crisis litigation.
The first debates in the legal theory field were linked to the possibility of ensuring the judicial enforceability of these rights and to the role of the courts in this new scenario. The dialectic was oriented, centrally, towards the demonstration of the analogies that exist between civil and political rights, on the one hand, and social rights on the other. In practice, the lack of specific regulations replicated —at its turn— the existence of social inequalities. First because of the limited access to justice and then because of the overuse of the procedural instruments specific to individual rights.
JUICIO A LA DESIGUALDAD suggests an alternative view, which at the same time serves as a guide for the new forms of litigation emerging. For this, the author analyses the theoretical and institutional difficulties derived from social rights and suggests the elaboration of categories according to their speciality. She develops her argument in two parts, the first specifies the reasons why social rights should not be totally equated with civil and political rights, showing, instead, the convenience of a specific theoretical and procedural treatment. The second part is based on the experience of Public Interest Litigation and sets out the guidelines that will serve for the development of a collective procedural paradigm —with participatory and deliberative bases— that allows ensuring the effective protection of these rights.