Sensing the nation's law historical inquiries into the aesthetics of democratic legitimacy : introduction

We are said to live in an age of democratic legitimacy. The rightfulness of a political and legal order is meant to reside in a widespread belief in the rightfulness of democracy. Contemporary democratic legitimacy is tied, among other things, to consent, to representation, to the identity of ruler and ruled, and, of course, to legality and the legal forms through which democracy is structured. The nation, its unity, and whatever democratic legitimacy its form of rule enjoys, become tangible and emerges as much in shared taste, in the pre-supposition and generation of aesthetic con-sensus, as in the formation or execution of a common will or the inculcation or reasoning of a common reason. This introduction presents the ten chapters of the edited volume, each of which engages with the intersection of aesthetics and law, and, more specifically with the question of how the nation – and its (fundamental) law – are ‘sensed’ by way of various aesthetic forms

Transnational activism the case of Sarayaku. The actions of Sarayaku in the International and National Arenas

Transnational activism has greatly expanded in the last decade. This kind of militancy, involving networks of people and alliances across borders, has increased worldwide. Different kinds of causes have generated this activism, which has grown in the area of environment. Nowadays, one the biggest challenges is certainly the preservation of nature. In fact, many Indigenous people in the Amazon are facing oil exploitation threats. This puts both the rainforest and indigenous people’s territory in danger. In response, some of these people have chosen to react through transnational activism. Considering this situation, this investigative work takes the case of the Kichwa people of Sarayaku, an indigenous community of Ecuador, to illustrate how some Indigenous people are acting nationally and internationally to defend their cause, and to determine if the people of Sarayaku mobilizations involve transnational activism.El activismo transnacional ha conocido una gran expansión en la última década. Aunque este tipo de militancia ha generado diferentes causas, conoció un crecimiento en el área del medio ambiente. Hoy en día, uno de los desafíos más grandes es sin duda la preservación de la naturaleza. De hecho, el activismo transnacional es hoy día utilizado por los pueblos indígenas para defender la naturaleza frente a la amenaza de la explotación petrolera, entre otras cosas. Ésta pone en peligro no sólo el futuro de la Amazonía, sino también los territorios de los pueblos indígenas, ya que muchos están ubicados en la selva. Este trabajo de investigación toma el caso del pueblo Kichwa de Sarayaku, una comunidad indígena de Ecuador, para ilustrar cómo algunos pueblos indígenas están actuando a nivel nacional e internacional para defender su causa

The Transformation of the Laws of War Into Humanitarian Law

This study undertakes a genealogy of crimes against humanity. It inquires into key historical transformations that preceded the official birth of crimes against humanity in positive international law. The study brings to light changes in understandings of law, politics, and human being-together that accompany the articulation of crimes against humanity. To speak of crimes against humanity is to speak the death of God. With the French Revolution, man displaces God as ground and measure of law and politics, leading to the articulation of crimes against humanity. The man who displaces God is “natural man,” a man who is naturally good, and for whom the good is wholly natural. Through the trial of Louis XVI, the medieval tyrant, the ruler who oppresses his own people, becomes the criminal against humanity. The duty of rulers to God gives way to the sovereignty of the nation. Paradoxically, the category of the “enemy” appears as the only way to recognize Louis XVI for what he was and to grant him his due. Subsequently, key transformations in the international law governing war also lead to the articulation of crimes against humanity. First, war itself becomes a crime against humanity when, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the public law of Europe is dissolved into an abstract international law ostensibly encompassing the world. With this dissolution, the juridical category of the enemy (a category enabling mutual restraint in war) and the spatial character of law are lost. Engaging with the work of Carl Schmitt makes possible a consideration of these two important themes, including the impossibility of cosmopolitics without geopolitics. Second, in the latter half of the nineteenth century, humanitarian intervention appears as the potential exception to the prohibition against the use of force. Humanitarian intervention is justified on the basis of what we today call crimes against humanity. The jurists who justify humanitarian intervention ground it in a law of humanity. This law of humanity protects the rights of men as men and is administered by civilized states on the basis of a solidarity grounded in sheer humanity. More permanent tutelage of less civilized peoples and occasional interventions required by violations of laws of humanity belong to the same way of thinking. Third, the ground of this solidarity makes itself manifest as the laws of war are transformed into “humanitarian law.” Charity, love of God, is replaced by humanity, love of man. Sympathy, suffering-with, emerges as the ground of a human solidarity. Thus, the reduction of man to a “natural” or “mere” human being emerges as the principal ground of the articulation of crimes against humanity. However, and at the same time, this reduction of man to a mere specimen of the species humanity (to a being whose essence is given by nature) emerges as constitutive of the evil underlying crimes against humanity. Engaging with the work of Hannah Arendt makes visible this mirroring of the evils of crimes against humanity by the ground of the articulation of crimes against humanity

¿Tiene prioridad de permanencia la trabajadora embarazada en un despido colectivo?

El presente artículo analiza dos sentencias que han reconocido el derecho a la prioridad de permanencia de las trabajadoras embarazadas en un despido colectivo aplicando directamente una Directiva comunitaria. This article analyzes two court decisions which have recognized pregnant women the right to enjoy priority in relation to their permanence within a collective redundancy performed by the company, in virtue of an EU Directive