núm. 16 (2014): revista via iuris 16 (enero - junio)

The concept of “legal consciousness” is theoretically used to refer to the ways people, through their daily practices, make sense of law and legal institutions. Through an ethnographic study, conducted in Ciudad Bolívar in Bogotá, it was identified that members of youth groups perceive and experience the law as a mixed experience: familiar and distant at once. Within youth organizations senses of law are built from the contact and permanent exchange with the community, from the woven relationships with institutions and public officials -which lead them to have specific uses of legal tools-, and from the creation and implementation of alternative social norms governing their collective practices. What this qualitative study showed was a deep split between social organizations and the public sector in Bogotá, where the use of formal law and the creation of new forms of regulation cross their collective action.

Mexico, Chile, Peru and Colombia formed the Pacific Alliance as a trade block, which is expected to increase the flow of goods and services within their economies with the rest of the world, especially with Asia Pacific; likewise, geopolitically this new alliance hopes to become the most important partner in Latin America, in contrast to Mercosur or Brazil. This article aims to present the genesis and objectives of the Pacific Alliance, among which are: raising income, boosting economies to overcome poverty, attracting foreign investment in higher volumes, improving regional technological development, and extending the internal market to overcome low levels of productivity, and achieve integration and market penetration of the most prosperous countries in Asia: China, India and Singapore.

This article seeks to examine the political relations between sending states and their migrants abroad by focusing on the less explored context of Colombian, Peruvian and Uruguayan migration to Spain. In contrast to other research, it analyzes both the policies and programs designed by sending states to engage with their diasporas and the political actions of migrants, rather than focusing exclusively on one or the other. The aim is to understand how state-diaspora relations emerge and evolve in the transnational political field, in response to an evaluation of opportunities and costs on the part of the states and to migrants’ involvement in home country politics. To achieve this, the authors use a historical and comparative approach to draw similarities and differences between the three countries studied. The main contribution of the article is to highlight the importance of the historical and political context in which state-diaspora relations occur, as well as the migration history and characteristics of different migrant communities.

This study attempts to make a documentary investigation of the main instruments ruling public policies that affect the design and formulation of teaching strategies in Human Rights in different geographical levels. In this regard it is essential to address the universal declarations of rights generated from the UN, and those that have been developed multilaterally between member countries of the so-called Regional Systems, especially by the European and the Inter-American systems, which have affected discussions on the way in which Human Rights should be taught. To achieve the collection of multiple instruments and debates on the subject, it has been privileged the information from Western regional systems, followed by data on the Latin American situation, and finally focusing on the case of the educational public policy in Colombia. In this study the existence of a considerable gap between the normative ideal and the reality of human rights education is highlighted, not ignoring the clear fact that a collective, but insufficient, effort in the field has been undertaken by the education actors.

The aim of this study is to distinguish the different scenarios of filiation that appear in Law 14/2006 (26 May), on assisted human reproduction techniques. Issues related to predecease of the husband, surrogacy, double maternity and other issues are detailed thoroughly in that Law. At the same time, they have tried to find the answer to specific questions that may arise, which answers are in the jurisprudence. Finally, a small comparative is inserted with Law 35/1988 (22 November), on assisted reproduction techniques, previous legislation on that matter.

Just as society has evolved into a information and knowledge society, global village or “digital ecosystem”, both the role of the state and law have been transformed with new structures and dynamics that shape a new legal paradigm product of this society of information and knowledge. This paper presents some results of the research entitled: “Manifestations of state intervention in the field of Information and Communications Technologies ICT in Colombia”. Through legal and analytical research according to socio legal principles, with the adoption of their epistemological assumptions, that integrate interdisciplinary and critical approach as a basis of Latin American juridical sociology, from the perspective of Calvo (2005), and following the analysis of Blanco and Castaño (2005), new forms and dynamics of law expressed in the Law 1341 of 2009 are studied, concluding that the ICT Act explicitly states the role of the Colombian state as regulator, and regulatory law as a new law that should promote in every way the values, objectives and interests of society.

The role of the Agency for the Legal and Patrimonial Defense of the State has not been fully regulated in Colombia, despite being crucial, because decentralized and national instances have missed this event. Institutional analysis provides elements to articulate the claims of the agency with the organizational capacity of the Colombian State to meet this challenge. The State should assess its purposes and functions according to the claims of the agency. Incidentally, institutional analysis opens in the State structure the opportunity to consolidate the parameters of the agency, to finally print on the accountability framework of the State such leeway. The State must include legal defense, but without neglecting their commitments.

The article seeks to establish whether there is a limit, either legal or otherwise, regulating the actions and accountability of public officials in Colombia, as well as determine its responsibility by omission, overreaching in the exercise of their functions or “bad practices”, understood as wrong actions that overlook the principle of good faith and the common good, making their exercise prone to corruption, especially in the specific field of administrative contracting. The current Colombian law provides that State officials must answer for the damage caused in the performance of his duties because of the position they play (Article 51 of Law 80 of 1993). In the same sense, doctrine develops some personal, fiscal, monetary and political limits; however, these estimates are omitted so that several public officials act contrary to the law, with few cases investigated and punished.

For centuries and until relatively recently, specifically to the entry into force of Act 8/1983 of 25 June, which were introduced some reforms in the Criminal Code, the practice of certain games were punished Spain. It should be stressed that the discrepancies between supporters and detractors of maintaining or not the penalty of the game has been a constant in our country. The first believed that only the relentless weight of the criminal law would get away with this vice, which caused the ruin of countless families. The latter, however, appealed to the inefficiency that had always shown repressive laws and, therefore, argued that the best solution was to the regulations of the game and it ceased to be a proper subject of criminal law to be regulated exclusively by administrative rules. Between these two positions, our legislature has traditionally inclined by it, although on several occasions, unsuccessfully presented in Parliament on various bills proposing legalization, with the sterility of the criminal rules.

Infidelity and its consequences in the Spanish legislation becomes the object of study in order to elucidate, not only the implications thereof in the current law, but also the historical evolution of the same through the transformation, especially, of the social system. Of particular interest in this study are the consequences of infidelity in the damages derived, infidelity as grounds for divorce, disinheritance, the existence of a previous marriage, the influence of infidelity in marriage annulment, in the custody of children, and its impact in the marriage contract.