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

Las misiones entre infieles es uno de los pilares de la Compañía de Jesús, que ya estaba presente en Íñigo de Loyola y en el voto de Montmartre (París, 1534) origen espiritual de la Compañía de Jesús. Fue incorporado también en los documentos fundamentales en lo más peculiar de la Compañía: el voto de obediencia al papa “circa missiones.” San Ignacio como superior general inauguró este campo enviando misioneros a todos los continentes conocidos. Eso posibilitó la llegada a América de uno de los evangelizadores señeros, el P. Alonso de Barzana, el Francisco Javier de las Indias Occidentales, como lo llama el papa Francisco, retomando una expresión del siglo XVI.

Se expone en primer lugar las razones que justifican la consideración de la publicación como patrimonio cultural del país por su longevidad, productividad y nivel de cualificación de sus autores. Desarrolla una posible periodización que permite profundizar los estudios sobre las mentalidades a lo largo de las diversas etapas de la revista en diversos ámbitos, sobre todo de las ciencias sociales y religiosas, y, por fin, en el marco de estudio del pensamiento venezolano alerta sobre los sesgos de unas panorámicas culturales e intelectuales que invisibilizan la labor de las instituciones vinculadas a la Iglesia Católica.

In March 2021, the Mexican Constitution was amended to transition to a system of precedents. This amendment mandates that the “reasons” of Supreme Court rulings will be binding on the lower courts. However, the reform is rooted in a long-standing practice of case lawdoctrine, e.g., abstract statements the Court itself makes when deciding a case. Moreover, there is no consensus as to what these reasons are and why they should be binding. The objective of this article is to identify the possible notions of reasons to explore the Court’s different roles in shaping judicial law. Concepts of the common law ratio decidendi are used as an insight to identify four models of law making in Mexican practice, namely: judicial legislation, implicit rules, moral-political justifications and social categories. Although the first model seems to prevail, the others offer a broad understanding of how the Court creates law depending on the interpretative context in which it operates.

It filled me with pleasure to be asked by Problema editor-in-chief Sandra Gómora Juárez to lead a discussion on the theories and doctrine on precedent in our context alongside Prof. Marina Gascón Abellán. Besides the undeniable and recognized prestige of the Problema journal, there was also the possibility of working with Prof. Marina Gascón again and with Sandra Gómora for the first time. It was also an opportunity to discuss issues regarding precedent with old friends like Flavia Carbonell, Fabio Pulido and Silvia Zorzetto, and exchange opinions with new ones like Rodrigo Camarena. On this occasion, I would like to comment specifically on the works of Prof. Fabio Pulido Ortiz and Prof. Silvia Zorzetto, both of which are of unquestionable quality. The article by Prof. Pulido Ortiz of the Universidad de la Sabana in Colombia is a work of analytical finesse and subtlety that discusses some fundamental problems of legal theory from the standpoint of the theory of precedent. Prof. Silvia Zorzetto from Università Statale di Milano has conducted an analytical and meta-linguistic survey of the use of precedents in Italy, particularly at the Italian Sezioni Unite Civili della Corte di Cassazione. This work is priceless not only in terms of its value as a study of (internal) Italian legal culture, but also because the analysis can be generalized, at least in part, to explain how precedents are used in civil law systems.

The object of this contribution is to analyze some of the main types of legal arguments usually found in judicial precedents in order to grasp their relevance and range in practice. The analysis is drawn from the case law of the Italian Court of Cassation Civil United Sections with a view also to elicit a comparison between the uses of judicial precedents in different judicial systems. However, the analysis is of an explanatory or critical-reconstructive nature and illustrates a series of uses and problems linked to judicial reasoning, the scope of which is general and therefore, goes beyond the specific juridical context at hand. The analysis is conducted from an internal point of view and, particularly from the standpoint of the decision-maker (i. e., the judge) and addresses some vexatae quaestiones surrounding the idea that case law is the source of law in practice. The study defends the thesis that the argument from precedent is, in fact, a very heterogeneous and much more extensive family of arguments than is usually assumed from traditional taxonomies of legal arguments. Moreover, the study defends the thesis that case law is inevitably a “source of law” for pragmatic reasons inherent to judicial reasoning.