Tag: World Law Congress Colombia

The President of the Constitutional Court of Spain chaired meeting of the Spanish legal profession for the World Law Congress 2021

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>> The meeting was attended by the Minister of Justice of Spain, the Colombian Ambassador to Spain, the former president and current judge of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, Eduardo Ferrer, and the 50 most important law firms with presence in Spain

The Madrid Bar Association (ICAM) hosted a lunch with representatives of legal institutions and law firms convened by the World Jurist Association (WJA). During such, the program of the Opening Session Bogotá-Madrid of the World Law Congress Colombia 2021 was presented, which will be held during July 5 and 6 in Madrid. This lunch was attended by the President of the Constitutional Court of Spain, Juan José González Rivas, the Minister of Justice of Spain, Juan Carlos Campo, the Colombian Ambassador to Spain, Luis Guillermo Plata, the judge of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, Eduardo Ferrer Mac-Gregor, the president of the General Council of Spanish Lawyers, Victoria Ortega, the dean of ICAM, José María Alonso, and the vice president of the Mutual Fund for Lawyers, Joaquín García-Romanillos.

During the opening speech, José María Alonso acknowledged that the hosting of this event is “a joint project to promote the Spanish and Ibero-American legal world beyond our borders.” The Dean pointed out the importance of “being aware of our potential and to act in unison.” In this sense, he welcomed initiatives such as those of the World Jurist Association, “which has the objective of reinforcing and enlarging our presence in the world, as well as being a collective, supportive and inclusive project.”

For his part, Javier Cremades, president of the WJA, underlined the association’s special defense of the rule of law and explained that in the world “there are profound processes of distortion and falsification of the rule of law within our democracies; alerts that exist in many countries and show that the rule of law must be taken care of so that more and more people take shelter under it”, recalling “the need for life to occur under the rule of the law ”.

Let us remember that the World Law Congress brings together prestigious presidents of courts, magistrates, government officials, academics, lawyers, students and legal professionals from around the world, who discuss defense issues of the rule of law as a warrantor of freedom. The last edition, held in Madrid in 2019, brought together more than 2,000 jurists, a framework in which the WJA awarded King Felipe VI with the World Peace & Liberty Award.

The next edition of the World Law Congress, which will be held in Colombia, on December 2 and 3, 2021, has held Opening Sessions from different cities around the world over the course of a year, with the Opening Session Bogotá-Madrid being the most powerful of all, as an allegory to the delivery of the witness from one country to the other.

Ambassador Luis Guillermo Plata expressed the suitability of holding the Congress at a time like the one Colombia is going through. He highlighted the values ​​promoted by this event and the message it conveys, since “Colombia is a country where we must talk about freedom, democracy and rights, but all within the framework of the law.”

The Minister of Justice of Spain, who participated in the inauguration of the opening sessions in Barcelona in July 2020, congratulated the World Jurist Association for having references from the international legal sphere, and has recognized that this event “represents an extraordinary opportunity to strengthen international legal cooperation”.

For his part, the president of the Constitutional Court of Spain expressed his wish that the celebration of the Opening Session Bogotá-Madrid and the congress in Colombia “be moments of deepening on the values ​​of the rule of law.”

Eduardo Ferrer Mac-Gregor, Judge of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, Trustee of the World Law Foundation and member of its Organizing Committee, presented the content of the Opening Session Bogotá-Madrid program. On July 5, he highlighted the holding of an unprecedented panel discussion on gender equality and the rule of law, made up by presidents and judges of the world’s most important supranational courts, who will meet for the first time in history. Similarly, tribute will be paid to the recently deceased Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the last recipient of the World Peace & Liberty Award in 2020, and the Ruth Bader Ginsburg Medals of Honor. Ginsburg of the WJA to the world’s leading women jurists will be presented in her honor.

For its part, on July 6 there will be a summit of presidents of the supreme and constitutional courts of Europe and the Americas, which will also have presidents of different institutions related to the Judiciary and the presidents of the bars of the Mexican legal profession, with aim to discuss the rule of law.

Al finalizar el acto se entregaron placas conmemorativas a José María Alonso , Decano del ICAM, Luis de Carlos , Patrono de la World Law Foundation y Presidente de Uría Menéndez, Pedro Pérez Llorca ¸ Socio Director de Pérez-Llorca, Carlos Rueda , Socio Director de Gómez-Acebo y Pombo, y Fernando Bautista , Socio Director de Bautista & Asociados. Un reconocimiento a su permanente y necesaria colaboración con el éxito del World Law Congress Madrid 2019.

“The Distortion of the Economic & Social Constitution from La Paz”

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>> The main presidents of the Ibero-American jurisprudence academies have participated in the latest Opening Session

The World Jurist Association (WJA) and the Permanent Conference of Ibero-American Jurisprudence Academies have organized the debate “The Distortion of the Economic & Social Constitution”, moderated by Ramiro Moreno Baldivieso, president of the National Academy of Legal Sciences of Bolivia. This meeting has brought the main representatives of the Ibero-American academies of jurisprudence together virtually and has become the eleventh Opening Session of the World Law Congress Colombia 2021.

Augusto Trujillo, president of the Colombian Academy of Jurisprudence, has recognized that “the rule of law supposes freedom for economic activity and for private initiative, but without forgetting the responsibilities of the social state.” In this sense, he assured that “the law has to be a true guarantee of coexistence”. Javier Cremades, president of the WJA and the World Law Foundation (WLF), has reinforced this position, assuring that “if we want rule of law, we have to work towards it and make sure that there is no distortion or destruction of the Constitution, for which it is essential to identify when threats and attacks on the rule of law begin to be created”. Manuel Aragón Reyes, academic director of the World Law Congress, emeritus magistrate of the Constitutional Court of Spain and member of the Royal Academy of Jurisprudence and Legislation of Spain, also made reference to this, stressing that “when the rule of law is distorted, the social state is harmed”.

For his part, Bernardo Fernández del Castillo, president of the Academy of Jurisprudence of Mexico, has underlined the relevance of transferring what the rule of law implies: “it is seldom understood by the general population because they do not have a clear concept of what it can encompass, implying respect for the legal order in the legislative hierarchy of each country”. He also stressed that “it entails absolute respect on the part of the human rights authority and has the obligation to ensure that this is respected.” However, Mario Castillo Freyre, director of Conferences of the Peruvian Academy of Jurisprudence, believes that “[Peruvian] society has accepted the falsification of political organizations.”

Encarnación Roca, vice-president of the Constitutional Court of Spain, has placed special emphasis on the protection of children in the rule of law and has recognized that “we must try not to leave the interest of the minor only to a programmatic declaration”, and in terms of child exploitation, pointed out that “work prevents children from having a healthy childhood, a full childhood and a safe environment.” In addition, she highlighted the importance of minors knowing what democracy is, because otherwise, she assured, “they will not be able to live in a rule of law.”

Cecilia Sosa Gómez, president of the Supreme Court of Venezuela (1996-2000) and member of the Academy of Political and Social Sciences of the country, has analyzed how the constitutional distortion of economic rights occurs: “we are experiencing turbulence associated with the Venezuelan political process and the impossibility of solving the problem in light of the Constitution is due to the fact that the 1999 text has been a mere facade for the tempters of power and the opposition elites have had a purely political vision of the problem and not constitutional or institutional, nor economical either”.

Along these lines, José Luis Cea Egaña, president of the Chilean Academy of Jurisprudence, has commented “with uncertainty and some hope” the problem that his country is currently going through. “Although we are close to voting on a new Constitution, we are going through a process of deconstitutionalization in which the phases of the legal system are being violated and there is an environment of misrule along with vandalism where society is being neglected by the State, which is weak, fragile and does not serve the human person”. In his speech, Sergio D’Andrea, president of the Brazilian Academy of Legal Letters, explained how the Amazon has become a lost paradise within the framework of the distortion of the social and economic Constitution.

For his part, Rafael Vergara, former director general of the Bolivian Tax Authority and the country’s Academy of Jurisprudence, has focused on debates such as those involved in the opening sessions: “we jurists must guide these meetings so that these decisions which distort the nature of constitutional control and the essence of the defense of minorities and the rule of law, do not repeat themselves in another part of Latin America”. And for Armando Andruet, president of the Academy of Jurisprudence of Cordoba, “the best laws make citizens better and they deserve to have judges who judge with broad scientific capacity and a dignity and ethical commitment.”

This has been the eleventh day of the series of opening sessions prior to the World Law Congress to  be held in Colombia this year, making it coincide with the 30th anniversary of the Colombian constitution. Through the projection of an institutional video, the president of the host country, Iván Duque, has pledged to “continue promoting the strength of the rule of law as fertile ground to allow the growth and well-being, development and freedom of citizens”, and has assured that “we will continue working to build a better future for all based on the strength and guarantees of the rule of law”.

Telework at the WLC Opening Session London

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Inaugurated by the WJA President for UK, Christina Blacklaws, and Diego Solana, Coordinator of the World Law Congress Colombia 2021, the fifth Opening Session, celebrated from London on December 14, brought together Íñigo Sagardoy, Michael Burd, Renate Hornung-Draus, Daniel Funes de Rioja and Mbhazima Shilowa to discuss about teleworking.

Under the name “New ways of working and the future of work“, this new panel of dicussion focused on how current work trends should be regulated, the key factors for their transformation and the role each stakeholder should play in this field.

“In terms of work, this pandemic has changed everything, everywhere,” said Christina Blacklaws, President of WJA UK, immediate past President of the Law Society of England & Wales and President of Lawtech UK, who recognized that “we are now at the best possible moment to develop technological innovations that will change the way we deliver our services”. Blacklaws also shared data from a British study that “shows that the Covid-19 has accelerated the digital transformation by 5.3 years,” so that “we all know more about technology now than we did eight months ago”.

“We are at the best time to learn technological innovations that will change the way we work“

The debate began with the moderation of Iñigo Sagardoy, co-organizer of the event, president of Sagardoy Abogados and professor of labor law at the Universidad Francisco de Vitoria, who introduced the speakers after analyzing that “coronavirus has accelerated the transformation of organizations and we are at a turning point from which there will be significant regulatory changes in the ways in which companies are organized.

This scenario is confirmed by Renate Hornung-Draus, regional vice-president of the International Organization of Employers for Europe and Central Asia, who assured that “although the measures taken in most western countries to contain the pandemic have accelerated the digital transformation, they have also shown some deficits in the digital infrastructure, as well as its limits”. She advocates for a hybrid model of work with physical presence in the offices, in order to create corporate culture, but always respecting individual freedom. In this matter, she pointed out the difference between teleworking and mobile working, assuring that Germany has legislation on the former: “teleworking refers to a person working from home, it is at a distance, but in a fixed workplace; and it implies that there has to be an agreement between employee and employer by which the rules are respected”.

Michael Burd, head of the employment division at Lewis Silkim (London) and an expert in telework regulation, examined how labor regulation has evolved over the years: “what we see is that legislation and regulation are lagging behind the reality of work”, and acknowledged that “the feeling I have is that it has only increased with the evolution of technology, which is increasingly rapid, and has become more intense with the changes in work practices that have forced us all to change our way of working”. For this reason, and in the event that a worker remotely provides services from another country different from that of the company, he called for “legislation that contemplates key points, such as where to pay taxes, health insurance conditions, social security…” and concluded by recognizing “that local labor legislation in some cases complicates solving the global nature of this type of work”.

With regard to the regulation and negotiation of conditions, Daniel Funes de Rioja, vice president of the International Labor Organization and president of the Argentine Business Confederation, said that “unions must adapt to new realities and contemplate the changes from the perspective of the fourth industrial revolution, otherwise, if they continue thinking in terms of the second or third, technology will evolve without them and a gap will emerge”.

On this matter, Mbhazima Shilowa, former Secretary General of the Congress of South African Trade Unions and former Prime Minister of the South African province of Gauteng, set the current situation as a starting point “to find in the upcoming years better ways to combine different aspects such as, for example, the penetration of the Internet in all places”.

“Social distance and flexibility are required, but this will not be possible without quickly resolving the social difference“.

Among the changes brought about by Covid-19, there is a debate about the vaccine and how it can affect workers’ relationship with their company. Michael Burd highlighted whether employers can demand their employees to be vaccinated or terminate them for not doing so.

“Medical data is considered sensitive information and this will lead to searching for a balance between privacy and security for everyone… This is about protecting health at a collective level“.

The Opening Session London was the fifth preliminary session to the World Law Congress Colombia 2021, coinciding with the 30th anniversary of the Colombian constitution. Through the projection of an institutional video, the president of the host country, Ivan Duque, has committed to “continue promoting the strengthening of the rule of law as fertile ground to allow growth and welfare, development and freedom of citizens”.

FULL SESSION: https://youtu.be/Y8xKC8Xd4X4

SUMMARY SESSION: https://youtu.be/naGKYUREj_k