This book discusses to what extent and how constitutional design and practice in Latin America have helped in combatting the subordination of women and LGBTQIA+ people. Covering 11 jurisdictions, the chapters identify the main elements of the constitutional gender order and survey jurisprudential and legislative developments in different areas, incorporating contextual analysis and references to history, political dynamics, social movements, feminist struggles, normative efficacy, and policy. In the context of a constitutionalism that has been celebrated as particularly innovative and socially engaged, the book assesses constitutional performance in the quest to supersede the separate gendered spheres tradition and the subordination of women and sexual minorities to heteronormative hegemony. It fills an important gap in the field of gender and constitutionalism, which has paid very little attention to Latin America compared to the Anglo-American legal world and continental Europe. It identifies regional trends, but also variables which account for the diversity of approaches in various jurisdictions. The book provides much-needed insight into matters that are relevant for legal and socio-legal scholars, an ever-growing number of social actors and movements, and all those interested in comparative constitutionalism and in the intersections between law and gender.

This ground-breaking collection of essays outlines and explains the unique development of Latin American jurisprudence. It introduces the idea of the Ius Constitutionale Commune en América Latina (ICCAL), an original Latin American path of transformative constitutionalism, to an Anglophone audience for the first time. It charts the key developments that have transformed the region and assesses the success of the constitutional projects that followed a period of authoritarian regimes in Latin America. Coined by scholars who have been documenting, conceptualizing, and comparing the development of Latin American public law for more than a decade, the term ICCAL encompasses themes that cross national borders and legal fields, taking in constitutional law, administrative law, general public international law, regional integration law, human rights, and investment law. Not only does this volume map the legal landscape, it also suggests measures to improve society via due legal process and a rights-based, supranational and regionally rooted constitutionalism. The editors contend that with the strengthening of democracy, the rule of law, and human rights, common problems such as the exclusion of wide sectors of the population from having a say in government, as well as corruption, hyper-presidentialism, and the weak normativity of the law can be combatted more effectively in future.

Considers whether and how constitutions have affirmed women's equal citizenship status, from the birth of constitutionalism to the present.

The essays included in this volume provide both an assessment of key areas and current trends in sociology, specifically with regard to contemporary sociology in Latin America, as well as a collection of innovative empirical studies. The volume serves as an effective bridge of communication allowing sociological academies to mobilize and disseminate research dynamics from Latin America to the rest of the world.

Around the world, we see a 'participatory turn' in the pursuit of gender equality, exemplified by the adoption of gender quotas in national legislatures to promote women's role as decision-makers. We also see a 'pluralism turn', with increasing legal recognition given to the customary law or religious law of minority groups and indigenous peoples. To date, the former trend has primarily benefitted majority women, and the latter has primarily benefitted minority men. Neither has effectively ensured the participation of minority women. In response, multicultural feminists have proposed institutional innovations to strengthen the voice of minority women, both at the state level and in decisions about the interpretation and evolution of cultural and religious practices. This volume explores the connection between gender parity and multicultural feminism, both at the level of theory and in practice. The authors explore a range of cases from Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa, in relation to state law, customary law, religious law, and indigenous law. While many obstacles remain, and many women continue to suffer from the paradox of multicultural vulnerability, these innovations in theory and practice offer new prospects for reconciling gender equality and pluralism.

The work presented in this volume is inscribed in a theoretical perspective that deals with the established relations between Law and society, and in particular a set of pertinent reflections on the issue of ‘Women’s Rights’. The title of this publication in itself can evoke in us a call to reflect on our own lives. Whilst excluding what we already know about how evidence and certain meanings commonly affect us as readers, we need to also ask ourselves questions in relation to the title about which specific rights, the work will be looking at in depth. Chapters: 1. CHALLENGES ANNOUNCED TO GENDER EQUALITY IN CURRENT BRAZIL: A “DEMOCRATIC STATE” AS A DANGER TO WOMEN’S RIGHTS 2. PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY: IS IT LEGITIMATE WITHOUT WOMEN? 3. VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMAN IN POLITICS 4. DEMOCRACY, ONLINE MEDIA AND VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMAN: THE DISCOURSE AS AN INSTRUMENT OF STRUCTURAL POWER FROM THE PATRIARCHAL SOCIETY 5. FEMINIZATION OF MIGRATIONS, FEMINIZATION OF CITIZENSHIP: “MIGRANTAS” IN OUR CONTEMPORARY DEMOCRACIES 6. THE AUDIENCES OF CUSTODY AND PRISON IN FLAGRANT IN THE DOMESTIC AND FAMILY VIOLENCE COURTS AGAINST WOMEN IN THE AMAZON-BELÉM 7. FEMINIST PERSPECTIVES AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS: AN APPROACH TO URBAN PLANNING FROM “FUNK CARIOCA” SONGS 8. A REFLECTION ON BRAZILIAN FISHERWOMEN FROM A DECOLONIAL PERSPECTIVE

This book offers a comprehensive introduction to law and policy responses to contemporary problems in Latin America, such as human rights violations, regulatory dilemmas, economic inequality, and access to knowledge and medicine. It includes 19 chapters written by sociologists, lawyers, and political scientists on the transformations of courts, institutions and rights protection in Latin America, all of which stem from presentations at conferences in Oxford and UCL organised by the editors. The contributors present original analyses based on rigorous research, innovative case-studies, and interdisciplinary perspectives, all written in an accessible style. Topics include the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, institutional design, financial regulation, competition, discrimination, gender quotas, police violence, orphan works, healthcare, and environmental protection, among others. The book will be of interest to students and scholars interested in policymaking, public law, and development.

Constitutional law in Latin America embodies a mosaic of national histories, political experiments, and institutional transitions. No matter how distinctive these histories and transitions might be, there are still commonalities that transcend the mere geographical contiguity of these countries. This Handbook depicts the constitutional landscape of Latin America by shedding light on its most important differences and affinities, qualities and drawbacks, and by assessing its overall standing in the global enterprise of democratic constitutionalism. It engages with substantive and methodological conundrums of comparative constitutional law in the region, drawing meaningful comparisons between constitutional traditions. The volume is divided into two main parts. Part I focuses on exploring the constitutions for seventeen jurisdictions, offering a comprehensive country-by-country critique of the historical foundations, institutional architecture, and rights-based substantive identity of each constitution. Part II presents comparative analyses on the most controversial constitutional topics of the region, exploring central concepts in institutions and rights. The Oxford Handbook of Constitutional Law in Latin America is an essential resource for scholars and students of comparative constitutional law, and Latin American politics and history Written by leading experts, it comprehensively examines constitutions, controversies, institutions, and constitutional rights in Latin America.

To explain how constitutions shape and are shaped by women's lives, the contributors examine constitutional cases pertaining to women in 12 countries, covering cases about reproductive, sexual, familial, socio-economic, and democratic rights, and focussing on women's claims to equality.

This book presents a challenging view of the adoption and co-option of multiculturalism in Latin America from six scholars with extensive experience of grassroots movements and intellectual debates. It raises serious questions of theory, method, and interpretation for both social scientists and policymakers on the basis of cases in Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, and Ecuador. Multicultural policies have enabled people to recover the land of their ancestors, administer justice in accordance with their traditions, provide recognition as full citizens of the nation, and promote affirmative action to enable them to take the place in society which is theirs by right. The message of this book is that while the multicultural response has done much to raise the symbolic recognition of indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples nationally and internationally, its application calls for a profound reappraisal in spheres such as land, gender, institutional design, and equal opportunities. Written by scholars with long-term and in-depth engagement in Latin America, the chapters show that multicultural theories and policies, which assume racial and cultural boundaries to be clear-cut, overlook the pervasive reality of racial and cultural mixture and place excessive confidence in identity politics.