The Dormant Clauses of Latin American Integration: Origins, Functions, and Paths for their Awakening - Public and Transformative Law, Ius Commune
Las cláusulas durmientes de integración latinoamericana: orígenes, funciones y alternativas para despertarlas - Derecho público, transformador y commune
Author: Dr. Juan C. Herrera
Publisher: IIJ-UNAM and MPIL
Year of Publication 2020, 350 pages, Spanish, Open Access and printed (300 copies)
In recent decades, Latin America has made progress in the construction of a common supranational space. Under the analytical, descriptive and normative perspective of the Ius Constitutionale Commune en América Latina project, this dissertation reads this as an “awakening” the dormant clauses concerning democracy, rule of law and fundamental rights and shows how to go ahead by implementing the Latin American clauses of regional integration.
Latin American integration is one of the central promises of the contemporary constitutional and international law that operates within the legal space of that region. To demonstrate the reason for and purpose of integration, this research offers a set of taxonomies for the object of illustrating and analyzing those norms that contemplate the consolidation of a supranational legal space. It rests on detailed reading of thirty-six constitutions that are in force in the Americas and the Caribbean as well as a comparison of primary and secondary sources: other constitutions, treaties, case law, constituent assemblies archives, and doctrine.
The main contribution of the book lies in demonstrating the premise of “deep” regional integration as a core element of the transformative and commune law that exists in the Latin American legal space. With a special focus on the South American experience, this work aims at contextualizing and reconstructing the historical origins of these norms and their technical function in the current context of the region. It interprets the dormant clauses through a pro integratione criterion taking inspiration from and adapt some mechanisms of the integration experiences in Europe, Africa, and Asia.
