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

The Others: Immigration as a Dilemma to Duff’s Theory on the Justification of Punishment In the classic debate over the justification of punishment, some avant-garde theories suggest that we must seek such a foundation in a relationship that precedes the criminal offense: a political relationship. Some versions of this in-vogue republicanism argue that we can call into account and punish others for their crimes because we all belong to the same political community as fellow citizens. However, such theories render the punishment of foreigners illegitimate. Drawing on socio-legal references to the Argentine case study, this essay discusses Duff’s theory and its critiques articulated by Zedner, Yaffe, and Chehtman. This debate reflects a dilemma for Duff caught between (a) justifying punishment on citizenship (but leaving punishment of foreigners without any normative orientation) and (b) renouncing a relational justification of punishment altogether. This essay argues that those who understand that the legitimacy of punishment relies on a pre-existing political relationship should redefine that relationship to account for the different bonds between people inhabiting the same political territory. Political membership may be a good reason to call into account fellow citizens for their crimes, but it may not be the only reason. After all, cohabitation admits many forms of political relationships.

On Violencias contra las mujeres: relaciones en contexto, by Silvina Álvarez and Paola Bergallo (eds.), Ediciones Didot, 2020, 396 pp. This review analyzes the main ideas expressed in the book Violencias contra las mujeres: relaciones en contexto. Assuming that law is an instrument that responds to the logics of patriarchy, this work points out the need to implement a gender methodology to explore the issues of violence against women, considering the context where such violence occurs and applying a relational approach. The review is structured around five thematic axes: 1) principles and concepts, 2) criminal law and violence against women, 3) sexual violence, 4) violence against women and protection of human rights.

On La derrota del derecho en América Latina. Siete tesis, by Roberto Gargarella, Siglo XXI, 2020, 96 pp. These pages examine one of Roberto Gargarella’s latest books. The manuscript, a diagnosis of the structural and normative problems affecting Latin-American constitutionalism, opens up debates central to the reforms of the region’s legal and political systems while advancing a regulative ideal towards which those reforms should be directed: the ideal of the law as a conversation among equals. While expounding those arguments the review comments on the book’s merits. It then offers critical remarks regarding the ways in which the ideal of the conversation among equals frames the relations between representative institutions and the citizenry. It finishes underscoring the thought-provoking aspects of La derrota del derecho en América Latina.

On ‘Constituent Subject’. A Brief Analysis from Legal Theory This article studies the concept of ‘constituent subject’ and, more precisely, seeks to identify and analyse its three defining properties: the condition of ‘constituent’ –and not ‘constituted’– of the subject, its legal limitlessness and its self-assignment of an ‘originary’ normative competence. Taking for granted that this concept maintains a necessary relationship with the concept of ‘constituent power’ (in which it is implied), each of these properties is studied from an analytical perspective which focuses on the phenomenon of normative production as it stems from exercising his power. As an effort of conceptual clarification, the article discusses and addresses potential objections to each of the three properties identified. Finally, and from a neutral point of view, the reasons that account for the politically uncommitted nature of the subjective element of the constituent power are indicated.

Is There Room for Animals in John Rawls’s Political Philosophy? What role do nonhuman animals play in John Rawls’s political philosophy? In this article, I identify three possible answers to this question. According to the integrationist view, animals can be included within Rawls’s theory of justice, as genuine subjects of justice. On the compatibilist approach, animals cannot be included within Rawls’s theory of justice, but they can nonetheless be incorporated into other aspects of his broader political theory. Finally, the conflict view holds that there is a tension between recognizing the moral status of nonhuman animals and certain fundamental elements of Rawls’s political thought. The main goal of this paper is to defend this third view. First, I argue that the main attempts to integrate animals within Rawls’ theory of justice fail, as they end up contradicting some important elements of the theory. Second, I also argue that the compatibilist strategy is unsatisfactory, as it proves incapable of incorporating certain assumptions widely shared among animal ethicists.

Dworkin and the Philosophical Attitude Based on the book Ronald Dworkin. Una biografía intelectual, I will sustain the hypothesis that Dworkin is a philosopher of law that should be taken into account, not only for his ideas, as it is typically the case, but also for his way of doing legal philosophy. This article does not focus, therefore, on the specific contents of Dworkin’s legal philosophy, but rather on his views regarding legal philosophy’s transformative role. Indeed, the value of Dworkin’s thought lies in the fact that it intervenes at the core of the debate, setting out basic conceptual and justificatory problems and attacking the dominant thought at a certain moment.

Constitutional Alchemy Socratitos is an irreverent thinker whose concerns in a few but variegated matters, among them, the unsuspected logic of law, seem, all the time, to tend more to humor than to reason. In this fake dialogue, Arturo Zaldívar, President of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation, discusses with that unoriginal carácter, what is the truth about the votes cast to invalidate articles 4, section VI, and 26 of the Electrical Industry Law, in the “acción de inconstitucionalidad” 64/2021, resolved by the Supreme Court on April 7, 2022. After apparently being refuted, one by one, the arguments of the the Justice to justify why the qualified majority of eight votes was not reached —as some academics and political actors claimed— but only the simple one of seven votes, the procedural truth in any way ends up imposing itself, leaving the question about the material truth deposed, in the style of the Platonic dialogues of youth that the author pretends to emulate.

Are the legal norms abstract entities or objects? Four clarifications and their scopes   The main part of studies about the ontology of legal norms has opted for understanding them as some type of abstract object or entity. However, beyond the nuances of each conception, a discussion about what it means that legal norms are understood in this way has not been offered yet. This omission could be explained because there is still no theoretical articulation regarding what underlies the concrete/abstract dichotomy in the philosophical debate, but rather different ways of explaining the distinction. Hence, in the interstice between two problems not sufficiently addressed, this paper aims to amend one of these explanatory gaps by contributing to determining whether it is appropriate (or not) to understand legal norms as abstract objects.

Reading Hegel as a Criminal Agnostic This article presents a new reading of Hegel’s theory of punishment, based mainly on his Outlines of the Philosophy of Right, by reading it as an agnostic theory of punishment. The article explores the use of contemporary interpretations of Hegel’s corpus, as in Bates and Žižek, in reading Hegel’s theory of crime and punishment, as well as underexplored aspects of said theory itself. The text shows how the internal contradictions in Hegel’s treatment of punishment text are assimilated into any possible concept or application of punishment. The text centers around the analysis of punishment in the section ‘Abstract Right’, making use of Hegel’s other texts as support in the proposed reading, and concludes with a reflection on the consequences of the text’s reading in the latter sections of Hegel’s text, notably in ‘Ethical Life’.

On the Ontology and Metaphysics of Legal Norms This work analyses the question of the ontology of legal norms, i.e., what kind of entities are legal norms and how these entities come into existence. Regarding the first question, the article rejects that legal norms are (i) abstract entities independent from other entities or (ii) concrete entities dependent on other entities. Instead, it is defended that legal norms are abstract entities and dependent on other entities. Regarding the second question, the article dismisses the idea that the dependency relation may be explained correctly (i) by the notion of causality or (ii) by the notion of supervenience. Instead, it is held that the dependency relation is correctly explained by a liberal notion of grounding.