Escuela de Derecho

Authors: Martin Hevia, Eric A. Friedman, Lawrence O. Gostin et al. 

Abstract

We propose that a Right to Health Capacity Fund (R2HCF) be created as a central institution of a reimagined global health architecture developed in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. Such a fund would help ensure the strong health systems required to prevent disease outbreaks from becoming devastating global pandemics, while ensuring genuinely universal health coverage that would encompass even the most marginalized populations. The R2HCF’s mission would be to promote inclusive participation, equality, and accountability for advancing the right to health. The fund would focus its resources on civil society organizations, supporting their advocacy and strengthening mechanisms for accountability and participation. We propose an initial annual target of US$500 million for the fund, adjusted based on needs assessments. Such a financing level would be both achievable and transformative, given the limited right to health funding presently and the demonstrated potential of right to health initiatives to strengthen health systems and meet the health needs of marginalized populations—and enable these populations to be treated with dignity. We call for a civil society-led multi-stakeholder process to further conceptualize, and then launch, an R2HCF, helping create a world where, whether during a health emergency or in ordinary times, no one is left behind.

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Autor: Horacio Spector


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Autor: Horacio Spector


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Autor: Horacio Spector

Abstract: 

Contemporary political philosophers discuss the idea of freedom in terms of two distinctions: Berlin’s famous distinction between negative and positive
liberty, and Skinner and Pettit’s divide between liberal and republican liberty. In this essay I proceed to recast the debate by showing that there are two strands in liberalism, Hobbesian and Lockean, and that the latter inherited its conception of civil liberty from republican thought. I also argue that the contemporary debate on freedom lacks a perspicuous account of the various conceptions of freedom, mainly because it leaves aside the classic contrast between natural liberty and civil liberty. Once we consider both the negative/positive distinction and the natural/civil one, we can classify all conceptions of freedom within four basic irreducible categories. In light of the resulting framework I show that there are two distinct conceptions of republican liberty, natural and civil, and that the former is coupled with an ideal of individual self-control.

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Autor: Horacio Spector


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Autor: Horacio Spector

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Raz holds that necessarily all legal authorities, even de facto authorities, make a claim to legitimate authority. He does not say that legitimacy is a necessary property of law. This view, which I call the claim view, constitutes my focal point in this paper. Many commentators have criticized this view. I discuss and dismiss three critiques of the claim view: the verification critique (the claim view is not empirically confirmed), the legalistic critique (law claims legal authority, not moral authority), and the semantic critique (legal obligations are semantically distinct from moral obligations). I submit that Raz equates the meaning of legal duties with that of moral duties and yet denies that legal statements entail moral propositions. In other words, I distinguish the semantic identity thesis from the semantic entailment thesis. Instead of a semantic interpretation of the claim view, I defend a presuppositional ascription of a general claim to moral authority to authoritative
duty-imposing and normatively committed uses of legal language by official spokesmen. I show that law’s claim to authority does not prove the truth of the sources thesis, because conceptual confusion or insincerity can affect the epistemic reliability of the propositions embodied in the claim, and because blatant immorality can altogether cancel law’s pragmatically presupposed claim to moral authority. I also argue that the claim view can only warrant two qualified versions of exclusive legal positivism, one of which is almost tautological, the other self-contradictory. Finally, I suggest that exclusive legal positivism cannot be defended on conceptual grounds.

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Autores: Martin Hevia, Carlos Herrera Vacaflor

Abstract

The debate in law around the moment that legal personhood comes into being within a legal order strongly impacts the enjoyment of reproductive and sexual rights of individuals in Latin America. A salient element of these debates is that all the parties, on either side of the ideological spectrum, have structured their claims around a global language: the language of (human) rights. This article will draw on that language as a framework for studying the recent developments of the debates around the beginning of legal personhood and assisted reproductive techniques (ARTs) in Argentina. Recently, the National Congress of Argentina has approved the unification of the National Civil Code with the National Commerce Code. This important legal reform entailed several changes to the general principles of private law and family law. In fact, in the congressional (and media) debates around the drafting and approval of the reformed Code, the determination of when legal personhood begins and what are its effects for the legal regime of ARTs have been among the issues that provoked heated disagreements. This debate was sustained in the lingua franca of human rights agreed in the Inter-American Human Rights System, namely, the American Convention on Human Rights. What has been the object of these debates around the beginning of legal personhood and ARTs in the new Argentinean Civil Code? Did Argentinean Representatives learn anything from the experience of past debates in the Region on how to regulate the beginning of legal personhood and ART’s in a way that respects and protects human rights of individuals? This article argues that the text of the new Civil and Commerce Code failed to accommodate discourses about when life begins under a reasonable lingua franca of human rights. It also explains that a proper framing of such legal status must not entail moral or ontological foundations that would render the imposition of a belief or life plan on others. In light of that, the paper proposes a reading of the text that is consistent with international human rights case law.

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Autor: Alejandro Chehtman

Abstract

Las aeronaves remotamente tripuladas (popularmente conocidas como drones) han tenido una incidencia creciente en los conflictos armados contemporáneos, y es esperable que ésta no haga sino aumentar en el futuro cercano. A menudo han sido presentados como “revolucionarios” y tanto resistidos como defendidos a ultranza en la literatura especializada. Este artículo procura analizar cómo los drones nos obligan a repensar el marco normativo en virtud del cual consideramos el uso de la fuerza permisible. En particular, examina cómo algunos de sus principales rasgos inciden no solamente en la aplicación de los principios de necesidad y proporcionalidad, sino también en su precisión conceptual, y argumenta que las probabilidades de éxito forman parte sustancial de una concepción plausible del principio de proporcionalidad. El artículo cierra considerando (y rechazando) el argumento de Walzer según el cual, dado que el daño causado es finalmente responsabilidad de quienes usan a civiles inocentes como escudos humanos, y no de quienes operan los drones, el hecho de que puedan causar una cantidad desproporcionada de daño es irrelevante a la hora de evaluar su permisibilidad.

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Autor: Alejandro Chehtman

Abstract

Drones constitute an incremental advance in weapons systems. They are able to significantly reduce overall, as well as collateral, damage. These features seem to have important implications for the ad bellum permissibility of resorting to military force. In short, drones would seem to expand the right to resort to military force compared to alternative weapons systems by making resorting to force proportionate in a wider set of circumstances. This line of reasoning has significant relevance in many contemporary conflicts. This article challenges this conclusion. It argues that resorting to military force through drones in contemporary asymmetrical conflicts would usually be disproportionate. The reason for this is twofold. First, under conditions of radical asymmetry, drones may not be discriminatory enough, and, thereby, collateral damage would still be disproportionate. Second, their perceived advantages in terms of greater discrimination are counteracted by the lesser chance of success in achieving the just cause for war. As a result, resorting to military force through drones in contemporary asymmetrical conflicts would generally be disproportionate not because of the harm they would expectedly cause but, rather, because of the limited harm they are ultimately able to prevent. On the basis of normative argument and empirical data, this article ultimately shows that we need to revise our understanding of ad bellum proportionality not only at the level of moral argument but also in international law.

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Autor: Eduardo Rivera Lopez

Abstract

La aparición de las modernas técnicas de modificación genética (CRISPRCas9) ha abierto maravillosas expectativas en el campo de la biomedicina. Sin embargo, su aplicación sobre la línea germinal humana despierta todavía una fuerte oposición por parte de amplios colectivos. A menudo se aduce que factores como el riesgo que implica esta técnica, su propia futilidad, la amenaza implícita a la integridad del genoma humano, o la posibilidad de que acaben dando naturaleza a una nueva eugenesia justifican la necesidad de trazar una prohibición o, al menos, una moratoria sobre ellas. En este texto debatiremos la solvencia de cada uno de estos argumentos, concluyendo que, en realidad, no hay buenos motivos para oponerse a la técnica que nos ocupa. 

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Autor: Eduardo Rivera Lopez

Abstract

El trabajo discute la justificación moral del uso de drones (aviones militares no tripulados) en conflictos armados, tanto desde el punto de vista de la moralidad profunda de la guerra como desde el punto de vista de cuál es la regulación jurídica moralmente justificable. Desde la óptica de la moralidad profunda, argumento que no es posible dar un veredicto general acerca de la permisión o prohibición moral del uso de drones. Desde la óptica de las convenciones jurídicas para regular los conflictos armados, sostengo que la posición más razonable es la de una permisión fuertemente regulada, más que una prohibición absoluta.

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Autores: Jayanth K. Krishnan, Vitor M. Dias & Martín Hevia

Abstract

This essay examines the influence of foreign legal actors on jurisdictions that are not their own. Rachel Stern, a scholar of China, reflects on this point in her groundbreaking book published in 2013. In her penultimate chapter, Stern discusses how such foreign legal actors wield influence in China because of their presence on-the-ground. Building off of Stern’s research, this essay proceeds to ask whether foreign legal actors can influence a domestic environment, when that environment prohibits them from permanently working there. The analysis below will suggest so, arguing that the forces of globalization can enable foreign legal actors to impact even a market that keeps its legal-services borders closed.

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Autores: Martín Hevia and Daniela Schnidrig

Abstract

The right to health has many dimensions. On the one hand, it entails positive duties for states to protect the health of individuals. On the other, it encompasses patient decision making regarding personal health, an idea which is closely linked to the right to autonomy and the right to free development of the individual—that is, to dignity.1 This is why the informed consent of the patient and her right to make a choice according to her own values should be honored, even when her decision may seem irrational or imprudent. When patients are incapable of providing informed consent—for example, if the patient is unconscious—the law can authorize certain persons to act as a proxy on their behalf. In Argentina, the Patients’ Rights Act (2009) as amended by the Death with Dignity Act (2012) states that if a patient is unable to provide informed consent, consent may be provided on her behalf by her close relatives, affinal kin, or legal guardian, in this order of preference.2 The Patients’ Rights Act also permits patients to set up advance directives regarding health decisions to be made if they become terminally ill. In 2015, the Argentine Supreme Court of Justice discussed the scope of patient autonomy in the case D., M.A. s/ declaración de incapacidad. 3 This case presented a question that had yet to be explored by the court: how can we determine an unconscious patient’s will if she does not have written advance directives concerning whether a life-sustaining medical treatment should be continued? This article examines the grounds of the Argentine Supreme Court’s decision in D., M.A. First, we describe the case law that existed prior to D., M.A. Then, after explaining the facts of the case, we discuss the ruling and raise doubts about its scope.

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Autor: Eduardo Rivera Lopez

Autor: Eduardo Rivera Lopez

Autor: Eduardo Rivera Lopez

Autores: Eduardo Rivera López, Paola Bergallo, Celeste Braga Beatove, Martín Hevia y Ezequiel Spector

Abstract
El presente cuadernillo para docentes de una asignatura de “Ética profesional de la abogacía” acompaña al manual para estudiantes que ha sido preparado conjuntamente, aunque, naturalmente, también puede ser útil en forma autónoma, para cualquier docente que desee preparar su curso con sus propios materiales. La idea de escribir un manual para estudiantes, además del presente cuadernillo, se debe a la situación peculiar de esta disciplina dentro de la formación jurídica en nuestro país (y, quizá, en todo el mundo de habla castellana). En efecto, la carencia de material académico en castellano, apto para ser utilizado por estudiantes de derecho, es extrema. Existen en nuestro idioma escasísimos materiales para enseñar ética profesional y, hasta donde sabemos, ninguno de los recursos disponibles discute los problemas éticos importantes de la práctica de la abogacía con el abordaje que propone nuestro trabajo. En definitiva, la ética profesional de la abogacía, como materia y como disciplina (o inter-disciplina entre la filosofía y el derecho), no existe hasta este momento en nuestro medio. En este sentido, dictar un curso de ética profesional (al menos con las características que proponemos en este cuadernillo y en el manual) es fundacional. 

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Autor: Eduardo Rivera Lopez

Abstract

Autor: Eduardo Rivera Lopez

Abstract

Autor: Eduardo Rivera Lopez 

Abstract

Many think that resultant moral luck does not exist, because we cannot be blamed more or less depending on facts that are entirely beyond our control. The problem with this argument is that the other three kinds of moral luck (though I will focus specifically on circumstantial luck) have exactly the same feature: our responsibility also depends on whether certain (antecedent) incontrollable facts hold. However, rejecting all kinds of moral luck is a bold and implausible move. My goal is to take some initial steps in defense of the motto: circumstantial (and all other kinds of antecedent) moral luck, Yes; resultant moral luck, No. My argument does not amount to proof that resultant moral luck does not exist. I merely try to show that rejecting resultant luck and accepting circumstantial luck is not necessarily inconsistent or unmotivated.
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Certain parts of the international tax system are largely unexplored from a structural perspective. One prominent example is the asymmetric tax treaty network, i.e. the network that consists of bilateral tax treaties concluded between developed and emerging countries on the basis of the OECD Model Tax Convention on Income and on Capital (OECD model). The relative size of this network is substantial. For instance, the United Kingdom’s asymmetric tax treaty network represents about 72 per cent of its entire tax treaty network. This article offers a structural analysis of the asymmetric tax treaty network. It answers

two fundamental questions. First, it elaborates a theory for explaining why a representative emerging country is willing to conclude tax treaties with developed countries on the basis of the OECD model. Secondly, it extends that theory to understanding the dynamics of tax treaty interpretation in the emerging world. This extension aims to illuminate the structure of incentives the courts of a representative emerging country normally have when construing OECD-based tax treaties in the foreign direct investment (FDI) area. Game theory is used as a theoretical framework for answering both questions.

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Autor: Eduardo Baistrocchi

Abstract

This chapter shows the evolutionary path of transfer pricing dispute resolution in twenty countries from the five continents since 1799. It consists of six core stages that encapsulate how the ALP has gradually evolved from being a rule-based regulation to a procedural, standard-based regulation over the last century. The main driving force of this transformation is probably the ALP adaptation to two central technological innovations: the emergence of multinational enterprises over the first globalization (1850-1914) and, then, the emergence of the international trade in intangibles during the second globalization (1945 to the present).

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Autor: Eduardo Baistrocchi

Abstract

The way in which the countries studied here solve tax treaty disputes is normally related to exogenous elements. Local endowment of natural resources is a neat example. This can be seen as a continuum. On one end, countries with large endowments of natural resources, such as Argentina, Brazil and Russia, are normally keen on resolving tax treaty disputes by means of litigation. On the other end of the continuum, countries without this endowment, like Japan and the UK, normally prefer negotiations as the standard method to solve tax treaty disputes. This pattern seems to be grounded on the relative mobility of the relevant tax base. Less mobility makes tax treaty litigation more likely (and vice versa).

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Autor: Eduardo Baistrocchi

Abstract

This chapter offers the first global quantitative analysis of tax treaty disputes emerging in the almost first 100 years of the international tax regime (ITR). The time and space dimensions of the analysis are as follows. The time dimension covers the era that ran from 1923 — when four economists produced the League of Nations’ Report on Double Taxation proposing a legal technology that is now encapsulated in the OECD Model Tax Convention on Income and on Capital (OECD MTC) — until 2015, when the G20 and the OECD published the Base Erosion and Profit Shifting 2015 Final Reports (BEPS Reports), which ‘represents the first substantial renovation of the international tax standards in almost a century’ (pre-BEPS Reports Era). The space dimension of this analysis covers the G20 countries.

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Autor: Eduardo Baistrocchi

Abstract

This chapter offers the first global taxonomy of treaty dispute patterns emerging in the almost first 100 years of the international tax regime (ITR). The time and space dimensions of the taxonomy are as follows. The time dimension covers the era which ran from 1923 — when four economists produced the League of Nations’ Report on Double Taxation proposing a legal technology that is now encapsulated in the OECD Model Tax Convention on Income and on Capital (OECD MTC) — until 2015, when the G20 and the OECD published the Base Erosion and Profit Shifting 2015 Final Reports, which ‘represents the first substantial renovation of the international tax standards in almost a century’ (pre-BEPS Reports Era). The space dimension covers the G20 countries together with seven non-G20 countries: Cyprus, Hong Kong, Ireland, the Netherlands, Singapore, Switzerland and Uganda (the G20 and beyond).

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Autor: Alejandro Chehtman

Abstract

Whether terrorism should be conceptualized as a transnational or international crime is a deeply contested issue in contemporary international law. What is more interesting, the terms of the debate are made significantly more difficult by the fact that the adequate distinction between these categories is itself a matter of controversy. This paper provides an answer to this question by precisely clarifying the conceptual and normative fault lines between domestic, transnational and international criminal law. Accordingly, it first provides a conceptual analysis of these categories and suggests that the key distinction between them is jurisdictional, ie it concerns the scope of the right to punish them. On this basis, it examines where terrorism fits in these categories and why. Unsurprisingly, the article argues that terrorist acts do not fit in one category only. The paper distinguishes four “varieties” of terrorism which are conceptualized along two axes, ie, national and cross-border terrorism, and state terrorism and terrorism conducted by non-state groups. Ultimately, it concludes that while the majority of terrorist acts conducted by non-state groups belong to the province of transnational criminal law, the majority of those perpetrated by state authorities should be conceptualized as core crimes of international criminal law. But what is more important, the article proposes a substantive criterion to explain why any such act should belong in one category or the other.

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Autor: Alejandro Chehtman

Autor: Ezequiel Monti

Abstract

In a series of recent papers, Darwall has argued that Raz’s Normal Justification Thesis (NJT) ought to be rejected. Here I shall argue that Darwall’s criticisms are unsuccessful. First, I argue that, contrary to what Darwall suggests, the NJT does not rely on an inference from the fact that B has a reason to treat A’s directives as protected reasons to the conclusion that A’s directives are protected reasons for B. Second, I argue that Darwall’s arguments to the effect that the reasons that obtain in virtue of the satisfaction of NJT cannot ground accountability are either ill-conceived or insufficient. 

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Autor: Ezequiel Spector

Abstract

La forma de debate más habitual en los medios -con réplica en las redes sociales- consagra "ganador" a quien da el mejor golpe de efecto. En el mismo gesto en que nos acostumbramos a dirimir en términos de aclamación o condena, dejamos de prestar atención a cualquier tipo de argumento y nos contentamos con subir o bajar el pulgar. Cuando el contenido de una discusión íntima o pública, privada o mediática, se plaga de trampas argumentativas -en términos técnicos, falacias lógicas-, la verdad es la primera víctima. La pérdida de la capacidad de discutir ideas, sopesar argumentos y confrontar propuestas daña seriamente la cultura política de una sociedad y deteriora la democracia. En este libro, Ezequiel Spector pone en evidencia de modo práctico, concreto y lúcido las quince falacias más habituales en los debates políticos y presenta una guía útil para sortearlas y volver a discutir lógica, llana y, sobre todo, limpiamente. Porque sin honestidad intelectual no hay debate posible y sin debate no hay esfera pública, Malversados puede considerarse una oportuna herramienta de construcción de ciudadanía.

Autor: Alejandro Chehtman 

Abstract

Under contemporary international law, war crimes are conceived as particularly serious violations of the laws of armed conflict. Mere participation of rank-and-file soldiers in an unjust or unlawful war is generally not considered to warrant legal punishment. This position is based on the principle of equality between belligerents. During the last 20 years, this principle has been challenged by the so-called revisionist position in just war theory, as well as by certain scholars in international law. According to them, unjust or unlawful participants in armed conflict perpetrate serious wrongs. This article argues that their conduct is not only morally wrongful, but also that it should be criminalized under certain circumstances. On the basis of empirical research on cognitive biases, and on one of the leading accounts of legitimate authority in political philosophy, it argues that participation in war warrants criminalization only when the war is knowingly or manifestly unlawful. Furthermore, it claims that this position is not only sound at the level of deep moral principles, but that in fact it provides a persuasive reinterpretation of existing international law.

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Autor: Alejandro Chehtman

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Autores: Leandro Casiraghi, Gustavo Faigenbaum, Alejandro Chehtman and Mariano Sigman

Abstract

Editores: Martín Hevia y Facundo Rojo

Autor: Martin Hevia

Autor: Martín Hevia

Abstract

Under the Inter-American Human Rights System, individuals have a right to access reproductive technologies. However, the legal status of surrogacy agreements in State Parties to the American Convention on Human Rights (ACHR) is mostly uncertain. The article discusses whether a complete ban on surrogacy is compatible with the ACHR. It considers potential objections to surrogacy agreements: ‘corruption objections’—surrogacy denigrates the nature of what is being exchanged-, the potential exploitation of surrogates and welfare concerns of children born from surrogacy. The article concludes that States Parties to the ACHR should allow both altruistic and commercial surrogacy, but that regulatory schemes for appropriate protection of the rights of surrogates, intending parents, and children resulting from surrogacy ought to be secured.

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Autor: Martin Hevia, Felipe Jiménez

Fernando Atria’s La Forma del Derecho [The Form of Law] is an ambitious and provocative book with a broad scope. Its arguments go from contemporary legal theory to issues of legal history, constitutional theory, and political theology. In some ways, this makes the book a challenging, and at times obscure, read. But its broad scope is also a demonstration of Atria’s prolific and multifaceted work as a legal academic. Moreover, the book is an audacious and provocative attempt to dismantle some of the most pervasive pieces of received wisdom in Latin American legal culture. Legal positivism as the correct theory of law, legal forms as problematic, and judicial review as a necessary mechanism for constitutional democracies, are some of the standard views held in Latin American...

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