The book launches with examples, concrete cases, or political confrontations to explain how to conceive the safeguards at stake. It portrays these as embodying principles requiring particular actions and the implementation of policies. For instance, free speech demands permitting seemingly offensive expression plus promoting a diverse and open public debate. The work scrutinizes specific guaranties, such as those pertaining to asylum, citizenship, abortion, due process, self-determination, or the environment. It presents them as engendering problems peculiar to them. Next, the discussion dissects how precepts, like human rights and democracy, may contingently clash despite their overall commensurability. Finally, it underscores the interconnection of negative, substantive, and national entitlements with their positive, procedural, and international counterparts. Throughout, ruminations on the following questions unfold: How may courts and governments respectively contribute to actualizing the liberties at issue? How do these bear upon social justice? How may ideologically opposed states nonetheless collaborate on them?
The regulation of incorporated companies in Latin America and Continental Europe appears to distance itself from that in the United States. It differs in how it structures itself and handles incorporation, incorporators, piercing, governance, discipline, and shareholders. In their regulatory exertions, both regimes rely, certainly, on legislation and adjudication yet do so differently, qualitatively in addition to quantitatively. Apparently, civil and common law continue to specialize respectively though not exclusively in statutes and binding precedents. Still, they ever more frequently intrude into each other's apparent specialty, while leaving their own imprint on it. The tendency to converge coexists with that to diverge. This general difference, in tandem with the correlative concurrence, has evolved immemorially, growing in nuances and exceptions. Absent unexpected cataclysms, it should persist down this path into the future. So will its more specific counterparts, highlighted throughout the following discussion. They equally insinuate a somewhat tentative, simplistic, distortive picture of contrasts and similarities. So depicted, the Latin American and Continental Europe scheme seems to foment jurisdictional diversity, concentrate on compliance, enthrone an ever-present state, evoke the concept of the collective good, and dedicate itself to stakeholders. On the other hand, the U.S. model appears to compel convergence among competing jurisdictions, focus on flexibility or user-friendliness, kowtow to an all-powerful corporation (or directorate), wave the flag of individualism or efficiency, and consecrate itself to stockholders. Expectedly, this seeming opposition on specifics will likewise endure and modulate alongside any collateral overlap.
While many women have profited from the relatively recent rights-revolution in Latin America, their pregnant sisters have apparently had to sit in the back of the bus or stay off altogether. Even modest progress on abortion entitlements has come at a high price and slow pace, perhaps due to the opposition of an alliance of long-established and up-and-coming religious groups. On a positive note, however, the struggle for emancipation on this front seems to be moving forward. In Chile, the Constitutional Court's (or Tribunal's) opinion of August 28, 2017, STC 3729/2017, which generally upholds a legislative bill allowing a woman to abort in the face of risk to life, lethal prenatal pathology, or rape, provides a case in point. Significantly, it also expands the statutory category of conscientious objectors to include non-professional staff and institutions.
Without doubt, pervasive corruption may undermine a government's legitimacy. Citizens may lose faith in political and legal institutions and become cynical or rebel. Ultimately, the very survival of the polity may be at stake. This paper deals with these issues, but at a rather specific conceptual level. In particular, it explores the notion of a legitimation crisis and its implications for the issue of corruption in Latin America. This exercise will make it possible to appreciate how corrupt practices debilitate the state's claim to justification. Indeed, the notion of a legitimation crisis helps to illuminate the problem of governmental dishonesty in Latin America. If properly reinterpreted, it enables one to grasp corruption as an endemic threat to the normative identity of the national communities. The concept may describe a situation in which these collectivities must, at the outset, transition from an instrumental to a reflexive construction of legitimacy norms, such as autonomy, legality, and equality, in order effectively to regenerate a corrupt bureaucracy and, thereafter, struggle to recognize themselves after the changeover. Accordingly, one should not respond to the challenge exclusively in a technical manner, such as with the enactment of tougher laws or with the implementation of more drastic enforcement mechanisms. Nor should one take a merely motivational approach, in the sense of U.S. psychologist David McClelland, rather than that of Habermas. In other words, one should not solely seek to change the attitude or the prevailing professional culture in civil service. Instead, Latin American societies must embark upon an unlikely radical crusade to transform the way in which they understand themselves, particularly the premises of their social integration. Against all odds, they must genuinely commit to and identify with democracy, the rule of law, and solidarity. ; A legitimidade de um governo pode ser afetada pela corrupção generalizada. Os cidadãos perdem a fé nas instituições do Estado, tornando-se descrentes ou rebeldes. Em última análise, a própria sobrevivência do sistema político pode estar em jogo. Este artigo tem por objeto estas questões, sob uma perspectiva conceitual específica, explorando, a noção de crise de legitimidade e as suas implicações para a questão da corrupção na América Latina, bem como o modo pelo qual as práticas corruptas debilitam a legitimidade pretendida pelo Estado. Na verdade, a noção de crise de legitimidade auxilia na compreensão do problema da desonestidade governamental na América Latina. Se devidamente interpretada, possibilita a compreensão da corrupção como uma ameaça endêmica à identidade normativa das comunidades nacionais. Esse conceito pode descrever uma situação na qual essas sociedades podem realizar a transição de uma construção instrumental para uma reflexiva das normas referentes à legitimidade, como a autonomia, legalidade e igualdade, com o intuito de efetivamente regenerar a burocracia que está corrompida e, a partir daí, a lutar pelo próprio reconhecimento após a transição. Ademais, não se deve responder a esse desafio exclusivamente de forma técnica; por exemplo, com a promulgação de leis mais duras ou com a implementação de mecanismos de coação mais drásticos. Também não se deve adotar uma abordagem meramente motivacional, no sentido abordado pelo psicólogo americano, David McClelland, em vez de uma abordagem no mesmo sentido daquela de Habermas. Em outras palavras, não se deve apenas buscar mudar a atitude ou a cultura predominante do serviço público. Em vez disso, as sociedades latino-americanas devem entrar em uma radical cruzada para transformar a maneira pela qual elas se compreendem, especialmente no tocante as premissas de sua integração social. Contra todas as probabilidades, elas realmente devem se comprometer e identificar com a democracia, o Estado de Direito, e a solidariedade.
Dans le contexte de la définition des structures politiques postnationales, tous les États-nations font face actuellement à l'obligation de redéfinir leur position vis-à-vis de la culture nationale. Alors que celle-ci peut être vue, dans une perspective libérale, en tant qu'elle ne requiert aucune intervention ou action spécifique de la part de l'État, elle peut être également perçue au contraire en tant qu'elle requiert son soutien actif. L'histoire du nationalisme a souvent terni cette dernière position, mais l'on peut entrevoir que, dans certaines conditions, cette protection de l'État vis-à-vis de la culture nationale devient importante, et même nécessaire. La question devient à ce moment de définir les balises d'un tel nationalisme progressiste adapté au contexte contemporain.
