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This chapter describes key aspects of the history of clinical legal education in Latin America, which began in the 1960s, and the evolution of new approaches to clinical education in the region. It also explains the influence of the “First Generation” and “Second Generation” of the Law and Development Movement on the Latin American clinical movement, and the emergence of clinical programs based on the ideological and practical tenants of Public Interest Law (PIL). It explains further that while PIL clinics have been particularly fertile in proposing new forms of judicial intervention—they have just recently started to think more consciously about the limits of these strategies and the necessity to reconsider their role in both legal education and professional practice. The chapter then examines these developments from the perspective of four countries in the region with substantial clinical experience: Argentina, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico.

The article discusses the role of judges in the development of private international law (PIL). It highlights the changing role of judges in the context of contemporary globalization, and argues that as a result of the expansion of their international duties, judges, in a way that is analogous to the working cycle of the Hague Conference on Private International Law, also have a role in identifying legal issues that must be addressed by PIL, developing tools to address those issues, ensuring the implementation and operation of these tools, and assessing their effectiveness. The article also highlights the contribution of judges to the development of Hague Conventions, and describes the very important role of Latin American judges in the development of special devices to promote the implementation, operation and assessment of the 1980 Hague Child Abduction Convention in Latin America.

This essay revisits a classic work in the field of comparative public interest law, in relation to its conclusions on the potential of Public Interest Litigation (PIL) for countries in the global South. Published in 1987, The Role of the Judiciary in Plural Societies (ROJ) comprises a selection of academic papers presented at two workshops held in Surajkund, India and Eldoret, Kenya in August 1983 and February 1985 respectively. It addressed the role of judiciaries in aiding public interest law movements in five countries across Asia and Africa. It concluded that judicial activism, encouraged by social action litigation [or PIL], inspired by constitutional values, may be regarded as a vital human technology for social change in impoverished societies. After describing the Indian experience with Public Interest Litigations (PIL) in the last twenty five years, the author outlines the growing discontent among progressives over PIL, and the reasons for such a trend. The author concludes that the judiciary should reformulate its role in PIL by giving up the ‘command-and-control’ methods that have led to some of the gravest problems of contemporary PIL jurisprudence, including those where the judiciary has spurned the interests of the original constituency of PIL. The judiciary should focus on being an ally to strong civil society groups and movements in their attempt to make the processes of Indian democracy more participatory, inclusive, and effective in pursuing the developmental goals enshrined in the Constitution.

Union law is mentioned in the first position in lit a of para 1. When is the UPC required to apply Union law? The UPC was established by the UPCA which is a piece of international law and is not part of Union law. That makes the UPC an international court. However, the Member States established it—at the level of international law—as a court common to them which, pursuant to Arts 1(2) and 21 UPCA, is part of their respective national judicial systems. As part of the judicial system (Art 21 UPCA) of the CMSs—by an order under international law—and by reason of an express provision in Art 20 UPCA, the Court fulfils the obligation of the CMSs to apply Union law. Since the Court is a ‘court common to a number of Member States’, ‘it is situated within the judicial system of the European Union’, which is why ‘its decisions’ are subject to ‘mechanisms capable of ensuring the full effectiveness of Union law’. This wording—used in Opinion C-1/09 of the Court of Justice with reference to the Benelux Court of Justice—is also appropriate with reference to the UPC. Although it is integrated into the judicial systems of the Member States in a different way compared with the Benelux Court of Justice, it is a ‘court common to the Member States’, and it is only based on that connecting factor that the Benelux Court of Justice is ‘situated within the judicial system of the European Union’. The ‘mechanisms capable’ are expressly confirmed in Arts 21–23 UPCA.

At the turn of the twenty-first century, middle-class men and women formed non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and filed public interest litigation suits (PILs) in order to expand temple space, knock down buildings that block views of Kālīghāṭ’s façade, and remove undesirable materials and populations from its environs. Employing the language of cleanliness and order, they worked (and continue to work) to make Kālīghāṭ a “must-see” tourist attraction. Scholarship has shown that India’s new middle classes—those produced through India’s economic liberalization policies in the 1990s—desire highly visible forms demonstrating their modernity as well as their uniqueness on the international stage of urban space. The example of Kālīghāṭ indicates how India’s new middle classes build on the work of the old middle classes to deploy the temple as emblematic of both their modernity and their Indian-ness. In so doing, they read the idioms of public space onto sacred space.

This chapter examines the role of comparative law before Spanish private law tribunals. Analysis of case law shows that in the 20th century, after a long time of closure and an inward-looking perspective, Spanish tribunals became aware of the possibilities opened up by comparative law as bases for legal reasoning, both in domestic and in international settings. However, at the beginning of the 21st century resort to foreign elements and comparative tools is still not as common as it could, or even should, be especially in the private international law domain. Outside PIL, the two most remarkable features of the use of comparative law methodology are: a clear preference of the courts for non-compulsory instruments born out of comparative legal research; and a link between resorting to comparison and the academic background of the judge.

The Republic of Turkey has a civil law system with an administrative, military, and judicial (civil and criminal) court structure and a separate constitutional court. These all function as courts of first instance in civil law matters. The highest court of appeal in the judicial court system is known as ‘Yargitay’.