This work by Dr. María Virginia Salvo aims to promote an improvement in the Justice system, to become a contribution that allows ensuring the due defense of the rights of children and adolescents who are part of judicial processes; and guarantee them the protection they need.
The work exhaustively studies a very topical topic: the International Restitution of Minors, analyzing the national and international regulations applicable in Uruguay (as well as in several countries of the world), Uruguayan and foreign doctrine and jurisprudence, the judicial process in force in Uruguay and its guarantees (and weaknesses), how the defense of children and adolescents involved in judicial processes should be (and, in particular, how the designated Defenders for minors should act); and culminates with an in-depth study of the “Maria Case”, which shook public opinion and mobilized Uruguayan society, making visible how legal norms operate when they are applied in practice, their lights and shadows.
Likewise, it systematizes all the national jurisprudence of Family Appeals Courts and Supreme Court of Justice on these processes in the last 6 years, and addresses especially sensitive issues, such as domestic violence and sexual abuse, which transforms it into a socially relevant study.
The work manages to question the legal operators, professionals who deal with these matters, and also as people who live in society; and ends with a series of recommendations on changes that could be introduced, both in standards and in practice (including even a bill), to achieve a balance between the speed required by these processes and the guarantees that must be met, especially for the protection of the minors involved.
Until now, there was not a book that exhausted the subject as this one does.