Area
social Sciences
Sub-Discipline
Laws
Austral University of Chile
- City: Valdivia,
- Commune: Valdivia,
- Region: Los Ríos Region
goals
The Doctorate Program in Law, Constitutionalism and Law Mention is oriented to the realization of an original research work, essentially individual, and that promotes in students the development and strengthening of generic competences and specific high-level competences that lead them to obtain the academic degree of Doctor of Law and train them to perform competently, distinguishing, analyzing and using different types of legal reasoning.
In this framework, the general objective of the program is the following:
• Train researchers of the highest level in Legal Sciences, through a higher training plan that guides them in the preparation and defense of a doctoral thesis that will lead them to obtain the degree of Doctor of Law, Constitutionalism and Law; being able to autonomously develop original research that allows understanding, analyzing, building knowledge, critically assessing, identifying and proposing solutions to problems related to the phenomenon of Constitutionalism and its application in academic and professional activities in Chile and / or in other countries.
The specific objectives correspond to:
1.To train researchers with competent knowledge in legal research methodology, which allow the creation, analysis and critically appraisal of legal knowledge.
2. Train human resources with specialized knowledge on the impact of the constitutionalization of law, in order to obtain a deep domain of the legal system.
3.To train human resources capable of detecting similar problems both in other branches of the Legal System under study, as well as in other legal systems, being competent to account for other normative phenomena of the same sign or of opposite direction from the general explanatory scheme of the constitutionalization of law.
4.To train researchers capable of preparing articles of scientific impact in the disciplinary field of their research, make presentations at high-level congresses and seminars, and actively participate in national and international discussions on legal issues.
With the intention of ensuring compliance with the aforementioned objectives, a set of procedures are proposed: (a) select applicants of recognized academic merit who are in a position to make the most of the interaction with prestigious researchers and who form a group of doctoral students of excellence; (b) carry out curricular activities aimed at intellectual reflection jointly between professors and doctoral students, which allow the development of analytical skills and the construction of relevant disciplinary knowledge in students; (c) cultivate mentoring relationships between professors and doctoral students that are conducive to the autonomous performance of high-quality research work by the students themselves, so that, upon graduation, they are in a position to be recognized as peers by part of the scientific community; (d) consolidate a group of researchers who build quality knowledge in matters related to constitutionalism, its fields of application, and its analysis and reasoning strategies; and (e) encourage a greater involvement of researchers belonging to the faculty in management and teaching tasks of the Doctorate Program and its complementation, for teaching purposes, with prominent researchers from other institutions that contribute significantly to the achievement of the general objective of the program. .
Applicant Profile
Applicants to the Doctorate Program in Law, Constitutionalism and Law, must meet the requirements established in Title IV of the General Regulations for Doctoral Programs of the Austral University of Chile8. The specific requirements for admission are contained in the Internal Regulations of the Program:
• Possess a Bachelor's Degree in Law and / or Legal Sciences. As indicated in Article 24 of the Internal Regulations of the Program, the Program Committee may exceptionally admit Graduates from other disciplines, assessing the merits of each applicant in each case.
• The interested party must complete the Application Form through the website of the Doctorate Program10, within the deadlines indicated at the appropriate time, also attaching the following documentation:
1. Bachelor's Degree Certificate (and Title if applicable), as well as a Master's degree certificate, if the candidate has it.
2. Concentration of qualifications obtained in the Bachelor's and Master's degrees, if applicable.
3. Academic-professional curriculum vitae, and electronic copy of scientific publications, if any.
4. Personal letter of declaration of interest, substantiating the motivations and intentions of your application.
5. Letter of recommendation from two renowned academics who can provide references for the applicant.
6.Doctoral research proposal, according to the official format available on the Program's website, where the topic of interest to be investigated, the general research objective and an initial hypothesis are presented. It is necessary to clarify that what is stated in this research proposal will not necessarily correspond to the final research project of the doctoral thesis.
7. Simple declaration of professional activity and / or of the funds to which you have applied and / or enjoy. As has already been indicated, all of the above is governed by the General Regulations for Doctoral Programs of the Austral University of Chile, and in detail, by the provisions of Article 24 of the Internal Regulations of the Program.
Graduate profile
The graduate of the Doctorate Program in Law, Constitutionalism and Law Mention, of the Austral University of Chile, is a Doctor who is trained to develop original research individually, which allow building novel quality knowledge, analyze and solve legal problems, design , implement relevant solutions, in relation to the phenomenon of Constitutionalism, being able to perform both in the academic and research fields, as well as in the public and private professional field.
Specifically, the Doctor of Law with a mention of Constitutionalism and Law will be able to:
• Critically analyze the ideas and contributions made in the field of law.
• Distinguish and use different types of legal reasoning.
• Identify issues of legal relevance that give rise to the proper design and development of relevant and pertinent research projects.
• Autonomously carry out original works in the legal field and contributing, from their specialization, to works in other fields and / or disciplines.
• Use methodological strategies of the legal sciences, in a rigorous and pertinent way, for the development of research in specific areas of law under study.
• Promote the advancement of knowledge in specific legal fields, either in an academic and / or professional context, managing a relevant body of theoretical and dogmatic knowledge that accounts for the state of the art in these fields.
• Disseminate knowledge of specific legal fields, through scientific publications and participation in congresses and / or seminars at the national and / or international level.
• Face theoretical and dogmatic discussions of the highest level and in any national or international legal forum, providing clarity and new knowledge in the matters in which he has been trained.
Lines of investigation
The Doctorate Program in Law, Constitutionalism and Law, of the Austral University of Chile is based on the work with high-performance researchers who are part of the full-time faculty of the Faculty of Legal and Social Sciences. Consequently, most of these lines of research are framed within Research Projects (Fondecyt or similar) that have been developed or are under development at the Faculty.
The most important of these lines of research are detailed below, which correspond to different perspectives or points of view of the same phenomenon (Constitutionalization and Law):
Constitutionalization of Private Law: determination of how the process of constitutionalization of law has affected in the field of private law, making special reference to how the form of reasoning has been modified and the change that this has entailed at the content level. It deals in particular with changes in the areas of property law and in the area of family law.
Constitutionalization of Public Law: determination of how the process of constitutionalization of law has affected in the field of public law, making special reference to how the form of reasoning has been modified and the change that this has entailed at the content level. It deals especially with changes in the fields of criminal law, constitutional law and in the field of procedural law.
Judicial Activism and the Constitutional State: analysis of how the modifications that the paradigm shift has supposedly introduced due to the passage from a legislative rule of law to a constitutional state of law have affected judicial work. The intention is to thus analyze the limits of the judicial decision, determining which are the methodologically necessary steps of a discretionary nature, pointing out where it is inevitable that there are legally reasonable alternatives. Likewise, this line also includes where democracy is in constitutionalized systems.
Human Rights and Disadvantaged Groups: analysis of models of understanding of human rights and social justice that thematize, in particular, the situation of disadvantaged groups and explore theoretical and practical tools to favor the protection of the rights of these groups . In this framework, the study of discriminatory law, the review of the relationships between citizenship and rights, and the use of the gender approach as a cross-sectional analysis perspective stand out.
Evidence and Constitutionalism: Analysis of the impact that the constitutionalization process has had on the evidentiary law, as well as the challenges that the new objects and forms of judicial protection in the constitutional states of right. Special attention is paid to the fundamental rights of evidentiary content and to evidence and the processes of truth reconstruction in transitional justice contexts.
Theory of the Norms of Legal Reasoning: Analysis of the different types of norms and the relationships that they present among themselves, with special attention to the role they play in the structure of constitutional orders. Likewise, it is studied how the types of norms and their interrelations have an impact on legal reasoning, and condition the differences with other forms of legal reasoning (various types of legal formalism) typical of non-constitutionalized legal systems.
These lines of research correspond to the subjects taught in the Program. Furthermore, because the program revolves around the study of a certain theoretical perspective - that of the constitutionalization of law and the neo-constitutional perspective that it assumes - from which it is possible to analyze a multitude of theoretical-legal problems, it is anticipated that the previous lines of research are dynamic, being able to adjust them over time according to the work carried out by the researchers.