DERECHOS Y LIBERTADES: Revista de Filosofía del Derecho y derechos humanos
Derechos y Libertades is the biannual journal published by the Instituto de derechos humanos Gregorio Peces-Barba de la Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. It forms part of the publications of the Institute, together with the collections Cuadernos Bartolomé de las Casas, Traducciones and Debates. Lista de evaluadores 2023/ Referees 2023 Articulos aceptados/rechazados- Acceptance/rejection of articles 2023 Ethics statement and good practice/ Declaración ética y de buenas prácticas
Instituto de Derechos Humanos Gregorio Peces-Barba
The Gregorio Peces-Barba Human Rights Institute retains copyright of the published articles, reviews and news, and it is needed to quote the origin in any partial or total reproduction. The documents include the Creative Commons 4.0 license: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). Derechos y Libertades does not charge any fees for receiving, processing or publishing articles submitted by authors.
28º Congreso Mundial de la Asociación Internacional de Ciencia Política –IPSA–, Seúl, 12 al 16 julio 2025
Copyright (c) 2026 Bartolomé de las Casas Human Rights Institute http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Workshop internacional Obligaciones legales y método jurídico, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, 9 de mayo 2025
Seminario Reflexiones sobre la libertad: un espacio para repensar la libertad en clave contemporánea
Inauguración del curso académico 2025–2026 en el Instituto de Derechos Humanos Gregorio Peces-Barba de la Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
Blanca Rodríguez Ruiz, Luísa Winter Pereira (eds.), Democracia no binaria. Reflexiones interdisciplinares sobre la des-sexualización de la ciudadanía
Copyright (c) 2025 Bartolomé de las Casas Human Rights Institute http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
David Enrique Pérez González, Estatuto jurídico del Testamento Vital
Oscar Pérez de la Fuente, Jedrzej Skrzypczak (eds.), Bridging the Digital Divide. Perspectives on Inequality and Discrimination in the Digital Age
information and communication technologies (ICT)
Miguel Álvarez Ortega, Oriente y los derechos: hinduismo, buddhismo y confucianismo
Andrea Porciello, Filosofia dell’ambiente: Ontologia, etica, diritto
Mauro Barberis, L’incanto del mondo. Un’introduzione al pluralismo
Ángeles Solanes, Nacho Hernández, Formas de combatir el racismo en las redes sociales
Analysis of the applied standards for assessing regressivity in economic, social, cultural, and environmental rights during economic crises
This article primarily aims to document and analyse the most relevant standards applied in resolving cases involving potential regressive measures and insufficient available resources during economic crises. For this purpose, it examines the assessments developed and utilised in judicial decisions by the constitutional courts of Spain, Portugal, Colombia, and Mexico, in contrast with those of International Human Rights Law, particularly within the Universal System and the European and Inter-American regional systems. This comparative analysis seeks to identify a test for regressive measures that addresses the common elements of Economic, Social, Cultural, and Environmental Rights (ESCER/ DESCA): their core content, basic obligations, and multidimensional scope.
Gamete donation in Spain. Is a legislative reform necessary?
The regulation of gamete donation in Spain is currently framed within a biomedical perspective that prioritises technical and medical aspects, leaving aside social and ethical dimensions of increasing relevance. This article analyses the need for legislative reform to address existing gaps, especially in relation to donor anonymity and its implications for the rights of donorconceived individuals. Through a multidisciplinary methodology that combines legal analysis, empirical studies and comparisons with other jurisdictions in the European Union, significant shortcomings in the Spanish regulatory framework are identified, such as the lack of mechanisms to guarantee the altruistic nature of donations, insufficient transparency in donor registries and inadequate information provided to donors and recipients. Based on empirical data and international case studies, the authors propose the abolition of donor anonymity and the creation of a centralised agency to regulate gamete donation in Spain. These reforms would align national practices with European Union human standards, improve transparency and ensure ethical practices in assisted reproduction. This paper seeks to contribute to the current debate by making concrete recommendations for a fairer and more transparent legislative framework on gamete donation in Spain.
Assisted Human Reproduction Information System
What was justice in Ancient times? Misharum, Mishpat and Diké
In this paper, I analyse the conceptions of Justice in ancient Mesopotamia, the Old Testament, and Archaic Greece to seek a common substrate among the three, and I believe it can be found in the principle of reciprocity. Next, I explain how reciprocity is a mechanism for maintaining social cooperation, whose functioning is supported by Game Theory, Anthropology, and even Primatology. I will try to explain the importance this principle takes on in complex urban societies and how it is used in modern theories of Justice to, finally, approach its usefulness in defining the very idea of Justice.
The necessary articulation and optimization of the levels of protection of the right to health of older people
This paper examines the most relevant aspects of the regulation of the right to health for older people at three levels of protection: the universal system (United Nations), the European, Inter-American and African regional systems, and the Spanish legal system. The analysis considers not only the normative texts that specifically recognise the right to health for older persons, but also those that, in the absence of specific regulations, foresee the protection of health in a generic manner. In light of this study, we conclude that it’s necessary to adopt both a universal convention and a comprehensive national law to protect the right to health and the other rights of this age group, and that these regulations must take into account the provisions of current regional instruments.
Processing special categories of personal data for the purpose of ensuring bias detection and correction in relation to the high-risk AI systems
This article explores whether the measure proposed in article 10(5) of Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 laying down harmonised rules on artificial intelligence, which enables providers of high-risk AI systems to exceptionally process special categories of personal data for the purpose of ensuring bias detection and correction, is a positive action measure. We present the European Union and Spanish’ rules that define positive action and we analyse if the measure under study can be framed in the aforementioned definitions. Moreover, we study the measure in relation to the limits established for positive action by both the Court of Justice of the European Union and the Spanish Constitutional Court in matters relating to gender equality. Finally, we present some conclusions.
This article focuses on the so-called “invisible migrant childhood” or “at risk of statelessness”, to refer to those children who have been born in the migratory journey of their mothers and who, due to multiple circumstances, their birth has not been officially registered in any country. This non-registration results in the practical impossibility of determining the nationality, while it also generates difficulties in accessing basic fundamental rights such as education or health. Given the novelty of this phenomenon, the Administrations lack of tools based on domestic law to intervene in accordance with the “best interests of the child”. As the cases analysed in this study show, while international treaties and conventions (such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child) are also part of the Spanish legal system, they can be used, not as mere interpretative criteria but as direct application in the legal arguments of administrative and judicial decisions.
The interpretative arguments from legislator's intention
This essay aims to examine the interpretative argument of the legislator’s intention. We will distinguish six variants of this argument: three variants referring to historical legislators and three variants referring to an ideal, rational legislator. For each of them, we will give examples and explain the values that justify them. Then, we will present the theoretical criticisms directed against each variant: in support of these criticisms, we will also present the results of a recent empirical research carried out in the Italian legal system. We will argue that the theoretical criticisms are justified. The variants referring to the intention of historical legislators raise conceptual, ontological and epistemic problems and, in fact, are rarely employed (at least in Italian case law). The variants referring to the ideal legislator, on the other hand, open up room for judicial discretion.
On civilization, power and law An existential crisis
The model of global order in international relations and its legal institutionalization in the UN system is in deep crisis. We examine two of the reasons for this crisis: the criticism of the alleged Western hijacking of this model and the criticism of legal universalism itself, in an attempt to offer a possible legal universalism and to consider the role of the EU in this regard.
Nota del Director [Derechos y Libertades, 2026, n. 54]
Proyecto Edi-Der “Derechos humanos y desinstitucionalización: apoyos, cuidados y acogimientos inclusivos”
Copyright (c) 2025 Bartolomé de las Casas Human Rights Institute
Critical Theory (of Law) from Latin American liberation thought
This paper makes, from an iusphilosophical point of view, a connection between some ethical, axiological and evaluative contributions of Latin American liberation thought and critical theory in general, and the critical theory of law in particular. Three blocks are presented: a) an ecumenical anthropological faith based on a criterion of production, reproduction and development of human life; b) the categorical imperative against any process of victimisation; and c) finally, the proposal to denounce and confront the idolatrous processes and fetishisation of productions that juridically appear as an ideological inversion or reversal of human rights. The objective is to provide an input and material for analysis and orientation, in order to confront the current context of globalisation in the face of the various ontological dangers that threaten Humanity and planetary Nature.
Monográfico “Teorías críticas y derechos humanos”
Legal feminism and legal pacifism. Critical theories of law and the unconditional repudiation of war
In this essay, I would like to propose an initial reflection on the significant convergence between legal feminism and legal pacifism in the critique of war. First, I will briefly mention some considerations on legal feminism as a constitutive matrix of critical theories of law; subsequently, I will attempt to analyze the nature of legal pacifism as a critical theory of law. Then, after specifying why legal feminism and legal pacifism should be understood as “unprecedented knowledge”, I will stop, in a schematic way, to analyze their methodological, theoretical and thematic convergence.
Challenges for rethinking a critical concept of law in the 21st century
This article proposes as its main objective a reflection on the conditions of possibility of a critical conception of Law in the 21st century, recognizing the complexity and multiple interpretations that this proposition involves. Critical theory, traditionally seen as an instrument of resistance, rupture, resistance and emancipation, faces new challenges in the 21st century when applied to the institutional context of formal law, which has proven insufficient to address contemporary problems such as social inequalities, environmental crises, new forms of violence, racial discrimination, migration and neocolonialism. The central proposal of the article is to redefine critical thinking in Law, prioritizing the social, techno-communicational and ecological dimensions. The conclusion points to the need for an eco-social and counter-hegemonic civilizing project, inspired by the peripheral insurgencies of the South, which defends the urgency of life and the operationalization of a Human Right for the future.
The essay employs the conceptual framework of critical legal theories to highlight several key issues related to the equal legal recognition of older individuals and their rights (e.g., vulnerability, institutionalization, and ageism as a specific form of oppression), arguing for the necessity of developing a genuine critical theory of law concerning old age.
The text seeks to critically analyze the use of the expression “human rights” in everyday practice. The alternatives to be followed to defend the cause and the initial objectives of human rights are questioned, in turn, due to the misuse and the few positive results achieved since its appearance.
A limited yet significant aspect of the discourse surrounding the status of human rights defenders pertains to the conceptual definition of the term itself. Scholars and practitioners have argued that the absence of a universally accepted definition hinders the establishment of precise and enforceable standards for their protection. This article examines some issues in this debate in the context of the European Union’s human rights policy. From a critical perspective, the debate on the incoherence of the lack of recognition of human rights defenders within the space of the European Union is problematised and a decolonial reading of the resulting double standard in European policy on human rights defenders is proposed.
A legacy of commitment with democracy, rule of law and human rights