Social Science Activities

Law

The new regulation on remote work

The Royal Decree-Law 28/2020, of September 22, which entered into force on October 13, established a new special legal framework for remote work. This debate was organized in order to analyze the scope of the new regulation. Both Rosa Zarza, Global Manager and partner of the Labor Law department at Garrigues, and Jesús Cruz Villalón, Professor of Labor Law and of the Social Security of the University of Seville, pointed out the shortcomings they find in a law with “multiple gaps” and that “passed the hot potato instead of solving many questions raised by its application in the collective bargaining”. The discussion was moderated by María Emilia Casas Baamonde, from the Council of Social Sciences of the Ramón Areces Foundation. 

The Spanish Constitution and the management of the health crisis

The COVID-19 pandemic has tested the constitutional and legal instruments required for the emergency state application, which has raised and raises doubts and uncertainties. How to evaluate the action of the public powers to avoid both the unnecessary loss of freedom and to guarantee sufficient protection of fundamental rights, such as the right to life? Are the constitutionally established control mechanisms working? Francisco Caamaño, Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Coruña and former Minister of Justice; and Javier Barnes, Professor of Administrative Law at the University of Huelva, discussed these issues.  

Law, Artificial Intelligence, and Intellectual Property: a necessary and urgent dialogue

Manuel Desantes Real, Professor of Private International Law at the University of Alicante and former Vice President of the European Patent Office, assured that we are at the dawn of the fifth industrial revolution, the cognitive era, in which 90% of patents will include software. We are living, he said, exponential changes for which society is not yet prepared and we are facing a new era that is no longer digital but cognitive, in which a myriad of deeply disruptive, interconnected, and hybridized technologies - with artificial intelligence as spearhead - are already questioning all our values and all our decision-making mechanisms.