On October 10 and 11, the International Seminar: 'Judicial Protection in Latin America. Actions to guarantee fundamental rights during the Covid-19 pandemic' has been held at the campus of the Universidad Externado de Colombia. During the first part of the seminar, the Covid-19 Litigation database was presented.
The Externado University of Colombia participated together with the World Health Organization (WHO), the University of Trento and other higher education institutions, in the Covid Litigation Database initiative, an open access jurisprudence database, whose objective is to track litigation arising worldwide from challenges related to public health measures adopted in the context of the pandemic.
"This initiative has as its fundamental purpose to analyze legal decisions rendered during the pandemic that aim to ponder the exercise of state powers, the implementation of exceptional measures and a variety of issues such as mandatory vaccination, contracts, confidentiality, the management of privacy, fundamental freedoms and special attention to vulnerable groups,"
said the rector of the Externado, Hernando Parra Nieto.
As a point of contact for Latin America and the Caribbean, the Universidad Externado de Colombia brought together a team of 17 professors from different departments of the Law School, who, led by Professor Natalia Rueda, were responsible for tracking and analyzing the jurisprudence of 22 jurisdictions on the topics in question.
"The research group delivered 520 files of analysis of jurisdictional decisions from across the region, to be freely consulted, with the intention that these data can serve as input for the formulation of research proposals, public policy, legislation and judicial decisions in relation to the pandemic, but also in anticipation of similar future challenges,"
stressed the Rector.
For Dr. Emilssen González de Cancino, dean of the Faculty of Law,
"the number of cases that the project compiled, examined and organized based on very clear methodological criteria is relevant and will undoubtedly serve academics, judges, policy makers, and even private administrators and the scientific community to prepare guidelines and make decisions in the face of possible future crises of global scope caused by health or other emergencies".
The WHO specialist, Benn Mcgrady, said during the seminar that the database will help us understand how the law can be improved in the context of health emergencies:
"it is a very powerful tool that allows us to look back, see what happened in those two years and, in legal terms, determine what the lessons learned are".
The researcher Natalia Rueda said that in Latin America there were actions of control of legality and control of constitutionality, which are evidenced in the declaration of states of exception in many countries:
"thanks to these states of exception, the executive powers assumed broad powers under extraordinary powers, and these cases are important because they show the role of containment of the courts and the administration of justice to guarantee fundamental rights and contain possible abuses of power by the executives".
The first part of the seminar was also attended by Ignacio Ibarra, representative of the Pan American Health Organization; Paola Iamiceli, coordinator of Covid-19 Litigation Project, University of Trento; Fabrizio Cafaggi, Covid-19 Litigation' Network of Judges and Legal Scholars (Council of State, Italy); Ricardo Lorenzetti, of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (Argentina); José Manuel Álvarez Zárate, Director of the Department of Economic Law of the Externado; among other important experts.
