Violencia de género y justicia constitucional en Colombia

Julissa Mantilla Falcón
2009

The Legal Determinants of Health: Harnessing the Power of Law for Global Health and Sustainable Development

Ala Alwan, Agnes Binagwaho, Gian Luca Burci, Luisa Cabal, Mary DeBartolo, Katherine DeLand, Eric A. Friedman, Eric Goosby, Lawrence O. Gostin, Katie Gottschalk, Timothy Grant Evans, Sara Hossain, Jenny Kaldor, Susan C. Kim, Howard Koh, John T. Monahan, Gorik Ooms, Mirta Roses Periago, Rodrigo Uprimny, Alicia Ely Yamin
2019

Health risks in the 21st century are beyond the control of any government in any country. In an era of globalisation, promoting public health and equity requires cooperation and coordination both within and among states. Law can be a powerful tool for advancing global health, yet it remains substantially underutilised and poorly understood. Working in partnership, public health lawyers and health professionals can become champions for evidence-based laws to ensure the public’s health and safety.This Lancet Commission articulates the crucial role of law in achieving global health with justice, through legal instruments, legal capacities, and institutional reforms, as well as a firm commitment to the rule of law. The Commission’s aim is to enhance the global health community’s understanding of law, regulation, and the rule of law as effective tools to advance population health and equity.The term law throughout is used to mean legal instruments such as statutes, treaties, and regulations that express public policy, as well as the public institutions (eg, courts, legislatures, and agencies) responsible for creating, implementing, and interpreting the law. By establishing the rules and frameworks that shape social and economic interactions, laws exert a powerful force on all the social determinants of health. Well designed laws can help build strong health systems, ensure safe and nutritious foods, evaluate and approve safe and effective drugs and vaccines, create healthier and safer workplaces, and improve the built and natural environ-ments. However, laws that are poorly designed, imple-mented, or enforced can harm marginalised populations and entrench stigma and discrimination.This Commission brings together global leaders in the fields of health, law, and governance. We make the case for better, more strategic linkages between health and law, and the professionals who work in both fields. We begin by providing a short explanation of legal terms and concepts, and the actors and institutions that govern health. Our report is structured around four legal determinants of health, each of which powerfully affects health outcomes. We use the term legal determinants of health because it demonstrates the power of law to address the underlying social and economic causes of injury and disease. These four legal determinants show how law can substantially influence health and equity. We do not endeavour a systematic review of law in global health, but rather to advocate for, and demonstrate, the crucial value of law in advancing global health with justice. Finally, drawing on identified areas for reform, as well as principles of good governance and the right to health, we offer seven concrete recommendations for action.Legal determinant 1 states that law can translate vision into action on sustainable development. The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) present a bold and unifying vision for global health and development. Law offers the mechanisms, frameworks, and account-ability measures to achieve this vision. In particular, law can be used to lay the foundations for Universal Health Coverage (UHC), which is a crucial element of sustainable development. We show how the power of law can be used to achieve health with justice through a case study of how law can build and implement UHC. We make two recommendations for action.Recommendation 1 suggests that the UN, WHO, and international partners should set standards to support the implementation of, and objectively evaluate com-pliance with SDG 3·8 (UHC), as well as the upcoming UN political declaration on UHC in 2019.

Judicial Review and Rights Protection in Latin America: The Debate on the Regionalization of Activism

Francisca Pou Giménez
2015 | Routledge

Over the past two decades, legal thought and practice in Latin America have changed dramatically: new constitutions or constitutional reforms have consolidated democratic rule, fundamental innovations have been introduced in state institutions, social movements have turned to law to advance their causes, and processes of globalization have had profound effects on legal norms and practices. Law and Society in Latin America: A New Map offers the first systematic assessment by leading Latin American socio-legal scholars of the momentous transformations in the region.

Through an interdisciplinary and comparative lens, contributors analyze the central advances and dilemmas of contemporary Latin American law. Among them are pioneering jurisprudence and legal mobilization for the fulfillment of socioeconomic rights in a highly unequal region, the rise of multicultural constitutionalism and legal struggles around identity politics, the globalization of legal education and practice, tensions between developmental policies and environmental justice, and the emergence of a regional human rights system. These and other processes have not only radically altered the institutional landscape of the region, but also produced academic and practical innovations that are of global interest and defy conventional accounts of Latin American law inherited from law-and-development studies.

Painting a portrait of the new Latin American legal thought for an international audience, Law and Society in Latin America: A New Map will be of particular interest to students of comparative law, legal mobilization, and Latin American politics.