núm. 10 (2011): revista via iuris 10 (enero - junio)

This work is the result of research which analyzes “lawyers” as a professional category together with the roles they perform as such; in this particular case, the lawyers who work in the public administration in Colombia, as has been proposed by American sociolegal studies. This study has concentrated on the number of lawyers who are presently civil servants, analyzing their gender, pay and hierarchical level, using a quantitative comparison with other professions, and, of course, the training that these lawyers have received; these elements relate to each other and generally permit the examination of the current relationship between lawyers, the State and society.

This article examines the criticism of scientific discourse, feminist theory and conventional legal interpretations related to legal disputes arising from the emotional relationships between same-sex couples. The first chapter outlines three starting points for discourse analysis with a focus on non-heterosexual gender which are useful for a hermeneutical analysis of sentences, legal doctrine and norms that concern same-sex couples. The second chapter presents the thinking of feminist theorists, especially queer theorists, about the way in which “heterosexual thinking” operates and how it is compulsory in Law. The third and concluding chapter is based on the results previously presented and proposes a theoretical framework for a gender-based reading of the principle schools of legal interpretation which recognizes the diversity of couples that exist in society.

This paper intends to demonstrate the need for naming things and subjects so that they may exist and have meaning within discourse, specifically the heterosexual and heteronormative discourse that has been diachronically established as official. This naming is dependent on individuals who have a place or representation as Rights-Bearing Persons within the legal framework. The first part presents a reflection on naming from the perspective of language. The second describes naming within heterosexual discourse and policy. Finally, it is concluded that despite the naming through language, not all people are recognized as rights-bearing persons.

This article comes in the middle of the turbulent situation that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender population (LGBT) in Colombia is going through, which has been historically marginalized and invisibilized. Despite recent legal recognitions obtained by the LGBT people, expressions of violence and hatred against them persist at levels of concern. It is therefore appropriate to reflect about the extent of legal recognition for the LGBT social movement in order to gain visibility, equality, and respect for their diversity. To address this issue is taken as the base the work of Julieta Lemaitre Ripoll, Colombian jurist specialized in legal theory, social movements and feminisms, as she has been probably the only Colombian author who has reflected from the legal field about agreements and disagreements between social movements and the legal system. After going through the statements of Lemaitre, is concluded that despite the attacks and discrimination which LGBT population is still a victim, legal mobilization should not be abandoned as a strategy for recognition and affirmation.

This article presents a reflection about the Colombian socioeconomic and political situation in order to establish categories for understanding both the conflict and possible post-conflict in Colombia. Once these issues have been analyzed, the Democratic Security Policy of President Alvaro Uribe in force during his two terms of government shall be examined as well as the effects of this governmental policy has had on war and peace in Colombia. Finally, we propose some challenges to the social and political context which must be undertaken by society and State in the search for a comprehensive peace in Colombia and the construction of real post-conflict scenarios.

This paper provides a synthesis of six authors who have worked with liberal ideas of freedom; three are classical authors, while the other three are contemporary. This establishes a continuity between classical theories of freedom and the contemporary approach that will propose answers for the new problems of freedom in the world today, examples include the relinquishment of freedom for the sake of security or the very use of freedom to suppress it itself; it is hoped to reflect on what freedom is in contemporary democratic societies. This research is conducted under the presumption that the liberal theory of freedom contains elements to safeguard it from increasingly authoritarian democratic models. This paper uses a comparative perspective, establishing and interpreting the meaning of freedom for each of these authors from a historical, sociological and philosophical context.

The way in which black otherness has been conceived of in legal discourse is a system of representation, which ultimately embodies symbolic violence (Rojas, 2001), this violence is reflected in the exoticism, the threat, the subservience and the invisibility that in one way or another have been present in all norms designed to regulate the descendants of Africans from the emergence of the Diaspora and the institutionalization of slavery. Only two decades ago black otherness was recognized in terms of ethnicity, this was due to a series of organizational endeavors within black communities for empowerment as well as the adoption of multiculturalism in the constitutional change in 1991. Notwithstanding, national legislation has had an ontological approach with regards to people of African descent; it is worth noting the danger of addressing multiculturalism as a “new cultural racism,” as this logic would generate new forms of exclusion by reducing ethnicity to “natural” and immutable characteristics which are usually associated with folklore.

This article has emerged from thinking about how globalization is developing in Latin America; it reviews the literature on the origins, impact and significance of this globalization process within our region. This relationship is considered center – periphery within the context of globalization, which is taken as a historical process that began from the moment of discovery of America, according to Enrique Dussel (1994). On the other hand, the article argues that there is a change in Latin American International Relations in the era of globalization today, in that the methods that have been used exceed the new circumstances imposed by the global village. It finally looks at the way in which social, political and cultural elements present themselves within the process of globalization, these elements were not regarded comprehensively by purely economic approaches.

The article is about the relationship between emancipation and law. This relationship does not appear in the literature as uniform or peaceful. In contrast, an overview of literature yields a range of polymorphic positions: from the classical view of Roman law which is located in the etymological derivation of the same concept, i.e. the possibility of overcoming parental authority imposed by typical forms of social relations by authority to the possibility that subjects have – not just as individuals as considered in the Civil Code – but rather collectively, to find emancipatory mechanisms, which are possibly counter-hegemonic, in Law. The paper brings together the information that is considered relevant and presents a brief initial analysis as to the theoretical discussion of emancipation within the context of Law, without presenting final conclusions; it is, rather, an invitation to and a reflexive article for the academic community. The guiding question (or the compass, even) of the article is: Can the Law offer opportunities for social emancipation? If so, what conditions are needed for such a phenomenon to be possible?