Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

If constitutionalism means submitting power to law, the good or ill health of the law will have a great impact on the Constitution, and especially on the Rule of Law. Although legal nihilism (nichilismo giuridico) can be traced back to profound philosophical roots —as Romano, Irti Possenti and other Italian writers have brilliantly shown—, in this paper we intend to suggest that its current extension is due to other, less theoretical factors. Our approach here is different (yet complementary, we hope) from that of those authors. It should be added that in the end, legal nihilism favours power and impairs our freedom. Assimilating legal nihilism to wild anarchism and derailed freedom, however frequent, is an unwarranted petitio principii. A meaningful, healthy body of law would amount to a serious brake on legal nihilism because technology, like money and financial economy -major engines of our world-, is not only soulless but also mindless.

On the 60th Anniversary of the storied Hart-Fuller Debate, we would like to briefly revisit it to highlight some of its concerns and discussions in order to demonstrate how vivid they still are and may serve as a path to the Rule of Law, concluding on the importance of promoting fruitful argumentation on essential issues in Jurisprudence to enlighten the practice of Law.

The law, as a social mechanism for dialogue and resolution of conflicts, requires, to achieve its aims or objectives, the help of instruments that consisting, in general, in rules of behavior and decisions that provide solutions about traffic and conservation of goods. Such rules and decisions must be expressed, to be operative and useful, in a language (oral or written). Thus, using this words (law), should be oriented the actions of the legal operators (lawyers) . The legal technique is a very important auxiliary element of the law, therefore, any technological advance, which enhances the technique, contributes to facilitate and improve legal communication. Law is presented as a communication system, as a language, susceptible to technological improvement. In recent years, public authorities and particularly the Administration of Justice (understood, in this context, as the conflict resolution service that the State puts at the service of citizens) are incorporating technological advances, which the new digital era has created, to facilitate the processing of information and communication. In this process of technological adaptation, the new communication system allows citizens to communicate more directly with the State machinery which is responsible of "administering justice". Currently, this should mean greater efficiency in the treatment of cases, a saving of time, a reduction in costs and easier access to higher quality justice.

The legal philosophy of Thomas Aquinas has two essential moments: his theory of the laws, and his theory of right and justice. His Summa Theologiae can be understood as a great treatise on God and His decisions, i.e. His acts of creation of the world and of the rational creature. The global account of Aquinas becomes apparent in a set of decisions: general decisions (laws) and concrete decisions (judicial decisions). The virtue of justice must inspire all of them. However, the “real just” only can be seen in the particular decision; that is the reason why Aquinas understands “the right” (“ius”) as “the just” (“iustum”) or “the just thing” (“res iusta”). ¿For what do just laws serve if the definite decisions are unjust?

In most of our neighbour States, religious education, although with shades, belongs to the curricula in consequence of the right to receive and teach religious education and to guarantee the paternal educative right on the religious and moral education that is in accordance with its convictions. This has created problems regarding the competence on the determination of the subject’s content; and mainly with the legal position of its teaching staff since it exists a joint participation between the Church and the State based in the collaboration principle addressed in article 16, 3 of the Spanish constitution.

The significance of Saint Thomas Aquinas in the history of philosophy is hardly deniable. Yet, a thorough analysis of his contribution to the basic assumptions of the contemporary democratic and social state, based on the rule of law, remains to be done. This essay provides an approach to such question, avoiding both simplistic anachronism and the cliché a of Thomism justifying authoritarian or absolutist rule.

This paper aims to the study of the institutional law in the juridical methodology of Vallet de Goytisolo, just as is necessary to analyse his doctrinal origins and his nature. Furthermore, it will be pointed his theoretical and practical functionality for the community of jurist, that is, the importance of an institutional conception of Law in the business activity and the judicial dispute, the same as in the law creation and in the hermeneutic job of Law theorists. Finally, it will be analysed the theoretical coherence, the practical utility and the normative fitting of this institutional vision of Law.

The paper begins displaying the main stages of the historical process that has led to the definitive distinction between religious authority and civil authority in Europe. After identifying the foundation of politics in the freedom of the Church; and the foundation of the State in religious freedom; the Author comes to two conclusions: the first is that Christianity played a key role in the birth and development of secularization. The second, which in his opinion deserves to be clarified and put to the test of the times, consists in the claim of relegating State and politics in the narrow limits of worldliness. The claim of excluding that State and politics have spiritual implications. He therefore intends to test the idea that the liberal state of law could resist, at the expense of the many lacerations that fragment its social body, without the help of principles and values which it could not justify. Considering the problem under this particular perspective, it is clear that two concepts that characterize the European tradition, such as the principle of tolerance and an "healthy secularism", could represent the keystone that allows us to overcome the implicit contradictions and the unresolved tensions which still cross our post-modern and secular society.