Law and Diversity. European and Latin American Experiences from a Legal Historical Perspective

Research Project

The tensions between equality and inequality as principles of justice and distribution, as well as between general and individual case justice, should be among the basic experiences of any normative order. The history of law bears witness to this - and of ever new attempts to soften these tensions through institutional arrangements and special protection regimes. The European legal system is based on the principle of equality. But today there is an increasing concern about how this equality-based system reacts to the increasing demands to take more account the special situations of individuals and collectives. The equality postulate is also part of the Latin American legal tradition. But here, too, tensions are evident - often in a different and sometimes sharper manifestation.

These problem constellations are reflected in the debate on cultural diversity, but also in the struggle for the recognition differences of economic and socio-political nature. In some cases, very concrete changes are required in substantive law or procedural law. However, there are often doubts as to whether and for how long our equality-based legal system will be able to meet these challenges without changing its basic structures themselves. However, this only describes a general constellation. The social dimensions in which the tension between equality and inequality emerged and the legal solutions or attempts at solutions it produced varied from country to country. In the workshop and publication project "Law and Diversity - European and Latin American Experiences from a Legal Historical Perspective", which observes the legal development in the 19th and 20th centuries, contributions from various European and Latin American countries are intended to illustrate this manifoldness and at the same time facilitate comparison. Workshops in which the different perspectives are discussed serve this purpose. On this basis, collective volumes on the following topics will be published: Fundamental questions of law, public law, civil law, and criminal law.