The gendered effects of family migration law: contextual interpretation as a possible judicial remedy

At all normative levels, family migration law can disproportionally and negatively affect immigrant women’s rights in this field, producing gendered effects. In some cases, such effects are related to the normative and judicial imposition of unviable family-related models (e.g., the ʻgood mother ̕ the one-breadwinner family, or a rigid distinction between productive and reproductive work). In other cases, they are due to family migration law’s overlooking of the specific needs and difficulties of immigrant women, within their families and in the broader context of their host countries’ social and normative framework.To effectively expose and correct this gender bias, in this article I propose an alternative view of immigrant women’s right to family life, as a cluster of rights and entitlements rather than as a mono-dimensional right. As a theoretical approach, this construction is better equipped to capture the complex experiences of immigrant women in the European legal space, and to shed light on the gendered effects generated not by individual norms but by the interaction of norms that are traditionally assigned to separated legal domains (e.g., immigration law and criminal law). As a judicial strategy, this understanding is capable of prompting a consideration by domestic and supranational courts of immigrant women not as isolated individuals, but as ‘individuals in context’. I shall define this type of approach as ‘contextual interpretation’, understood as the consideration of immigrant women in the broader contexts of their families, their host societies and the normative frameworks applicable to them. Performed in a gendersensitive manner, a contextual judicial interpretation has the potential to neutralize the gendered effects of certain family migration norms. To illustrate these points, I will discuss selected judicial examples offered by the European Court on Human Rights, as well as from domestic jurisdictions of countries with a particularly high incidence of immigrant women (Italy and Spain).

Discovering keys to explain social policies within the social and democratic rule-of-law sate

There is a collective worldview on social policies that is expressed and understood by university professionals. However, it takes students time to construct this knowledge. Here, we provide fundamental ideas and a dynamic to facilitate learning of social policies. The preparation of a brief dictionary of significant terms is to be constructed as a group, alongside the maieutic work to be carried out by the teacher. The goal is to discover keys to understand the meaning of social policies and the underlying values that sustain a social and democratic rule-of-law state such as the one proposed in the Spanish Constitution of 1978. Attention is focused on the structure of the mixed welfare state. This is an integral proposal and comprises three dimensions. First, it considers the state and its possible welfare agents: business, market, the Church and civil society. The attitudes with which universal and inclusive social action is promoted, breaking radically with the aid-based meaning contained in other systems, are then addressed. Finally, we examine human dignity as a principle and aim of intervention, a basis for understanding other concepts such as human, social, labour and political rights. It is to be hoped that these pages prove useful for both teaching staff and students.

The duty of loyalty in the cooperative law. A comparative study

Among the duties of the government bodies’ members of the different entities, which are connected to the good government, the duty of loyalty must be underlined. This duty, derived from the good-faith duty, obliges to act in the interest of the entity in case of conflict of interest, and to subordinate one’s own interests, except when there is an authorisation. Loyalty duty is applicable both to managers, who must manage the entity’s interest, and to partners, according to the common purpose derived from the company contract. This duty, at the same time, includes some particular rules, referred to transparency, remuneration, prohibition of competition, self-contracting... This essay compares the regulation of the duty of loyalty and its realizations in the different Cooperative Laws in Spain, both referring to the managers and to the partners, comparing this, at the same time, with the regulation of these aspects in companies’ general legislation, an in the Spanish Corporate Enterprises Act in particular, in order to obtain a general view of the issue, a necessary basis to go more deeply into it, and suggesting some preliminary conclusions or assessments.

Estudio sobre la eficacia del régimen fiscal cooperativo portugués

El ordenamiento jurídico portugués consagra un régimen fiscal especial para el sector cooperativo, basado, al igual que otros ordenamientos como el español o el italiano, en la protección de la mutualidad como forma de organización empresarial especialmente benéfica en el plano social. Para alcanzar ese objetivo, el régimen fiscal cooperativo debe ser selectivo, lo que significa que al legislador se le plantea el reto de establecer criterios para separar, dentro del marco cooperativo, lo que debe ser protegido de lo que no merece protección fiscal. El legislador portugués optó por un modelo basado en dos grupos de ramos cooperativos claramente diferenciados según los beneficios fiscales aplicables, ambos con amplias exenciones fiscales. El presente trabajo no se centra en el contenido de los beneficios aplicables sino en las condiciones que las cooperativas deben reunir para acogerse a esos regímenes fiscales favorables. Estos criterios son: i) una división entre operaciones con socios y operaciones con terceros; ii) una delimitación de las operaciones o actividades cooperativas según estén o no vinculadas con el “fin propio de la cooperativa”; y iii) una estructura prevalentemente mutualista del factor trabajo. Esta fórmula legal tiene su raíz en una legislación de 1929 y se ha mantenido hasta el día de hoy debido en parte a un fenómeno de inercia legislativa. El presente trabajo, basándose en la metodología de la sociología jurídica, asienta en una encuesta dirigida a 64 cooperativas, por la que se buscaba indagar hasta qué punto estos criterios (de acuerdo con los que se seleccionan las cooperativas que pueden acogerse a los regímenes fiscales favorables) cuadran con la realidad cooperativa actual. Como era de esperar, la vetustez del régimen hizo que se encontraran desajustes muy significativos, que reclaman una reforma urgente.

Las Comisiones del Mapa de España en la década de 1850

La necesidad de contar con un mapa de base científica que cubriera todo el territorio español llevó al Estado a crear en paralelo varias Comisiones con cometidos geodésicos, topográficos y cartográficos durante la década de 1850. La labor simultánea de estas Comisiones se prolongó hasta 1859, cuando se aprobó la Ley de Medición del Territorio, que las fusionó en un único organismo. Este artículo analiza aspectos técnicos de los trabajos que realizaron estas Comisiones a partir de la información contenida en algunos documentos que custodia el Archivo Topográfico del IGN. Las conclusiones que se extraen son que estas Comisiones acometieron operaciones geodésicas que resultaron cruciales en el establecimiento ulterior de la red de triangulación peninsular, realizaron mediciones topográficas que fueron reutilizadas veinte años después en el levantamiento del Mapa Topográfico Nacional, e idearon las características catastrales que fueron adoptadas durante todo el siglo posterior para el Catastro de España.

El significado de la prosopopeya de las Leyes en el "Critón" de Platon

El objeto de este trabajo es realizar un estudio iusfilosófico sobre la aparición de las Leyes (nómoi) personificadas de Atenas en el Critón de Platón. La prosopopeya de las Leyes resulta ser un aspecto central para poder comprender la obra, ya que éstas entablan un diálogo imaginario con Sócrates en el cual instalan diversos argumentos filosóficos para fundamentar la autoridad de la pólis. A los fines de identificar el valor argumentativo de este recurso en la obra, analizaré el significado del nómos en la Atenas del siglo V a. C. y la naturaleza de las Leyes en el contexto general del diálogo. Se busca demostrar la importancia que tienen aquéllas para explicar la decisión de Sócrates de beber la cicuta.