vol. 16 núm. 20 (2014)

El Departamento de Agricultura de los Estados Unidos (United States Department of Agriculture, usda) es una unidad ejecutiva del gobierno federal. Además de tener a su cargo los programas de agricultura y ganadería, la alimentación es uno de sus renglones prioritarios. La seguridad alimentaria y nutricional ha sido la constante preocupación del Gobierno estadounidense, por ser un elemento determinante en el desarrollo del ser humano.

This article, based on the legal theory of liability, analyzes unlawful damage and reparation in the proceedings involving illegal gold-mining exploitation in the township of Zaragoza, Buenaventura, Valle del Cauca, Colombia. It specifically analyzes liability attributable to the public administration at its different levels. The article looks at the two main theoretical currents of liability (objective and subjective), recognizing the legislative and jurisprudential evolution from a concept of liability centered on the subjective fault element, towards a concept of liability based on the damage factor, on the objective consequence, which was incorporated at the constitutional level by the 1991 Constituent Assembly. In article 90, this Constitution establishes the Financial Liability of the State, without requiring the elements of a fault, from which it may be inferred that liability for environmental damages is objective because there is no element of fault necessary for its predication. Because the mining exploitation is illegal, there has been a crime committed along with environmental damage not protected under the law and so the research will analyze the type of damage caused. The aim is best to determine whether the case involves pure damage or consecutive damage, due to improper, unregulated and prohibited use of renewable or nonrenewable natural resources without the respective permits, authorizations or licenses .

Nuevamente tenemos un encuentro con nuestros lectores a través de las letras impresas en nuestra revista dixi. Una publicación que, como lo viene haciendo en todos sus números, agrupa trascendentales productos de investigación. Esto gracias a sus autores, quienes conscientes de que la investigación es consustancial a la actividad académica en las instituciones de educación superior, apoyan el desarrollo de un pensamiento crítico y autónomo al aunar esfuerzos para el desarrollo de proyectos con los cuales se pretenden solucionar problemas sociojurídicos de interés colectivo.

This article aims to present the changes and continuities in electoral abstention, starting from the eruption of governments with leftist tendencies in Latin America. Since the early 1990s, a series of governments have been elected in Latin America as alternatives to traditional politics, among which only Nicaragua and Venezuela conserve voting as a right rather than a duty or obligation. We believe that elections are a mechanism that enables verification of the level of legitimacy of these governments, so that abstention levels make it possible to determine to what extent those new policies foster the creation of more stable democracies. Taking a general approach to the role of legitimacy in the political system, we will look atthe role of elections in bourgeois liberal democratic systems. We will examine the character of so-called alternative governments along with the evolution of the abstentionist phenomenon in the two abovementioned countries. Their electoral abstention figures since the early 1980s show diverse trends worthy of consideration when characterizing their respective governments.

Precautionary measures are instruments used by the legal order to protect rights that are being violated within a proceeding. The aim of Law 1437 of 2011 was therefore to strengthen the powers of judges in order to achieve this protection, insofar as in the contentious administrative jurisdiction, the only possible measure had been to provisionally suspend the effects of an administrative act. This was not only insufficient but difficult to apply because of the rigor of its requirements. That was why the above-mentioned norm not only included new precautionary measures but also made the existing requirements more flexible to facilitate their application. Because precautionary measures in the contentious administrative jurisdiction are a new phenomenon, and in accordance with the new administrative procedural norm that became effective on July 2, 2012, there is a need for clarification about its functioning, applicability in the diverse control measures and real application, in order to determine whether it provides guarantees of adequate fulfillment of rulings.

This article presents the results of the research work “Characterization of Information Circulating in the Local Newspapers Vanguardia Liberal and El Frente about Boys and Girls who are Victims of the Armed Conflict.” It is a descriptive and exploratory study that, using the content analysis technique, analyzes the structures of 56 articles in 104 newspapers and how they reported on the topic. Both the research process and the analysis were carried out in light of legal premises referring to the rights of minors immersed in an armed conflict and their comprehensive protection, as contained in the Political Constitution of Colombia and international conventions. It was found that in the news —which accounted for a major part of the publications (58%)— there is very little coverage on boys and girls who are victims of the armed conflict as information sources (6%); and there is no record of analysis of this topic in the editorials and opinion pieces. In summary, boys and girls are taken into account when there are situations that merit publication of a newsworthy event, with an emphasis on the judicial aspect, whereas articles that promote an approach from the perspective of respect and guarantees for their rights are limited.

The development of regulatory statutes is based on the premise of the legal validity of laws and norms as well as the legal positivist concept of constitutional supremacy. This leads to the idea that no legislative or administrative law or regulation may violate a legal precept through action. It must therefore be said that lawmakers, the executive branch and administrative public servants can also violate legal precepts by omission, which is why they have to act in a certain way in order for a constitutional norm to be fully effective.

This article is the result of research proposed at the Centro de Investigaciones Jurídicas, Políticas y Sociales (cifad; Center for Legal, Political and Social Research). The project is in response to regulatory dispersion, with the aim of compiling one single codification of the principal and complimentary laws and regulations. This unpublished document has been submitted and is now at the research center library. The proposal also involves including in this document an analysis of the general structure of these norms as a whole, to enable the building and discovery of details deriving from the principles of solidarity in Colombian legislation, their impacts and main transformations. With this outlook as a point of reference, the conclusion was that the dynamic of the law and the solidarity economy is based upon the perspective of what is real and historically concrete. This in accordance with the postulates of Manuel Jacques Parraguez, who affirms that the law requires not only a sense of organizing what exists but also of active and constant change. At the end of the document, it can be seen that this task is being taken up by social and solidarity law, in accordance with its strategic objectives derived from social cohesion.

This article examines the relationship between law and morality and particularly the dilemmas that arise from that configuration. It uses diverse scenarios, both at the local and global levels, to address a problem that cannot be ignored, avoided or postponed. Even though legal theory assumes that these dilemmas have been settled, that is far from the case because they underlie the text without their true dimension having been resolved. Can the law be given immunity in the face of a dilemma?