Paper
El clamor de la tierra por una justicia ecológica
Papeles de relaciones ecosociales y cambio global, 167: pp. 5-10
Pedro L. Lomas
2024
The article raises dissatisfaction with the anthropocentric framework for environmental law and justice, which is reflected in the growing need that arises in different areas to confront human-nature relationships beyond instrumental values and individualistic ethics that these promote. From this dissatisfaction, new ecological law and justice are emerging that, although with a certain inevitable epistemological anthropocentrism, aim to overcome this framework, generating all kinds of innovative tools.
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Paper
Stop experimenting on us! Judicial stories of pesticide resistance in Argentina
María Valeria Berros
2024
This paper focuses on two paradigmatic court decisions on pesticide spraying in Argentina’s agricultural zone and offers a socio-legal approach based primarily on legal sources. The first case was brought by a small town in the province of Santa Fe and the second involved the entire territory of the province of Entre Ríos, where more than a thousand rural schools are affected by the pesticide uses.
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Paper
Derechos de la Naturaleza en perspectiva socio-jurídica: innovaciones jurídicas e institucionales y apuntes para la enseñanza del derecho
María Valeria Berros
2024
Este artículo parte del creciente reconocimiento de los derechos de la naturaleza, como muestran la proliferación en regulaciones y decisiones judiciales. El análisis adopta una perspectiva sociojurídica y se centra en los matices que ha adquirido este reconocimiento en América Latina, así como en las agendas de diseño institucional y de educación jurídica.
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Paper
Una Corte Suprema con agenda verde
Carolina Piazzi, Cristian Fernández
2024
La Corte Suprema de Justicia de la Nación (Argentina) es uno de los altos tribunales a nivel internacional que ha asumido un liderazgo notable en materia de tutela del ambiente, proceso que se inició con la sentencia en la causa Riachuelo-Mendoza, que oficia de punto de partida del trabajo.
Este trabajo indaga en el perfil “verde” de la Suprema Corte a partir de variables tales como: la composición que adoptó la CSJN en los últimos años y el perfil ambiental de algunos de sus magistrados; disposiciones administrativas internas referidas a su interés por el ambiente; ciertos fallos de los últimos años referidos a la problemática ambiental, algunos de gran trascendencia pública, que contienen nuevas tendencias argumentativas. Para esto, se realiza un análisis documental, casuístico y comparativo de los fundamentos de las últimas sentencias de la CSJN sobre ambiente; se revisan los dispositivos administrativos creados con fines de organizar la tarea interna relativa a la temática ambiental; se recupera información sobre los perfiles académicos y políticos de los ministros de la Corte.
Las conclusiones apuntan a destacar que la Corte ha ingresado en la categoría de “Corte verde”, a partir de su composición y de un perfil especializado en Derecho Ambiental que viene construyendo desde, al menos, el 2008. Además, existe una conexión evidente entre la trayectoria académica de algunos magistrados y el activismo judicial en cuestiones socio-ambientales que ha caracterizado a la Corte en los últimos años.
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Paper
Three (de)constructive readings of the commons
Rodrigo Míguez Núnez
2024
This article analyzes three de-constructive agitations of the traditional premises of property law in light of the commons’ conception. The study confronts the classical theoretical tools of private law with the notion of the commons to provide an understanding of property law from an inter-relational perspective that is, as a discipline focused on the interdependence between human and non-human beings in an ethos where nothing is separable. To this purpose, special attention is devoted to the non-economic value of the relationship that persons have with things, as well as to the “agency” of the latter, in order to institutionalizing the human and non-human inter-relation within the discourse of the commons
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Paper
Derechos de la naturaleza y bienes comunes naturales: análisis de algunas tensiones conceptuales a la luz del caso chileno
Luis Lloredo Alix
2024
The notion of commons has been reintroduced into the contemporary legal-political vocabulary, but there is much confusion about its meaning. In this article I attempt to offer some classificatory criteria that may be useful in distinguishing diverse uses of the concept. A distinction is made between “natural and social” approaches to the commons, and between “localist and globalist” conceptions. This is followed by an analysis of these conceptual tensions in relation to the inclusion of the rights of nature and the natural commons in the Chilean Constitutional Convention of 2022. It concludes with a response to the local/global aporia of the commons, based on Bruno Latour’s idea of the “terrestrial”.
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Paper
Transición energética y litio: nuevos “comunes” y otros extractivismos
Digno Jose Montalván Zambrano, Isabel Wences
2024
This paper presents the new forms of extractivism associated with the energy transition discourse formulated by the Global North. Specifically, it studies how the growing demand for lithium is generating various “local impacts” and “spillover effects” in Latin America, especially on indigenous peoples. In line with the above, we problematize the use of narratives that seek to enshrine the elements necessary for the production, distribution and storage of renewable energy as global commons or critical raw materials. We postulate, in line with several studies in the matter, that behind these apparently counter-hegemonic terms, corporate interests may be hidden, typical of green capitalism, aimed at deterritorializing conflicts and guaranteeing the supply of what, from the Global North, are called critical raw materials for the renewable technologies industry.
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Paper
You Cannot Have the Cake and Eat It – How to Reconcile Liberal Fundamental Rights with Answers to the Climate Crisis
Eva Julia Lohse, María Valeria Berros
2024
Our Western-style constitutional systems are not only built on 16th to 18th century social contract theory, but also mainly on a liberal understanding of individual human rights. They are an element of constitutions and international treaties and are increasingly used as a basis for claims of individuals against states for more action to tackle the climate change crisis. However, a human right to a sustainable climate meets plenty of challenges if understood as a classic human right. The question is whether human rights offer a solution to legal questions of the climate crisis by empowering people to demand specific measures from states. The authors demonstrate how the search for solutions has altered the understanding of human rights globally and will continue to do so. It sheds a light on whether the premises on the relationship between state and individual and burdens on individual freedom can still be answered by paradigms from social contract theories and whether the social contract needs to be enlarged by including non-human actors (like eco-systems) or future generations.
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Paper
Historias y porvenires para repensar sujetos de derechos y otros
María Valeria Berros
2024
This paper discusses the comments received from two colleagues who agreed to reflect on the article in which I put forward some ideas on new subjects and new others in contemporary law. On the one hand, Lean-dro Drivet who in his article entitled “ Dismantle the abyss between Subject and Nature. On the denaturing misdirection of subjectivity” reviews the assumptions underlying the concept of the subject that informs modern law. On the other hand, the article by Natália de Souza Lisbôa entitled “Keep dreaming while seeing the obvious: others and new subjects and people from the Latin American perspective” focuses on the need to create and expand possible futures through the recognition of new and other subjects and persons from the prism of the so-called new Latin American constitutionalism.
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Paper
Introduction On Nature and Property
Rodrigo Míguez Núñez, UPO
2023
The essays presented in this section start with an essential premise: the ideas we employ to characterize our interactions with the outside world are not neutral. Since ‘nature’ and ‘property’ are abstract concepts and mental constructions, every attempt at individualization should consider historical and geographical factors. Through a combination of empirical, historical, and theoretical approaches, the authors of this special issue examine the differing ideas of how ‘nature’ informs property rights, and the impact that legal, economic, or political choices have on the ethics of nature. Bringing together a diverse spectrum of disciplinary, geographic, and ideological perspectives, this special issue seeks to provide a sophisticated, interdisciplinary analysis of the rules that govern people’s access to and control over land and its natural resources to confront governance today in addressing unprecedented global crises related to climate change.
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