Convocatoria a presentar artículos número 26

The journal Cálamo, published by the Faculty of Law at the University of the Americas, Ecuador, is now accepting submissions for its 26th issue, to be published in January 2027. Articles, reviews, and interviews will be accepted until Monday, July 6, 2026.

Cálamo is a peer-reviewed journal, published biannually (January–July), specializing in legal studies. It is intended for the academic community and the general public interested in law and its relationship to other disciplines. Its objective is to foster debate on issues of national and regional relevance.

Cálamo accepts essays and research articles throughout the year that address law, particularly in dialogue with other disciplines such as philosophy, sociology, political studies, and anthropology. Each issue proposes a central theme to be explored in the Dossier section (a monographic section), while texts analyzing other fields of study are included in the Essay section (an open section). Interviews and reviews are also welcome, primarily, but not exclusively, those related to the central theme of the issue.

Coordinator(s) of Dossier No. 26

Marcella da Fonte Carvalho is a lawyer, consultant, academic expert for the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) in Ecuador, expert witness in criminal and gender cases in Ecuador, professor, and academic coordinator of postgraduate programs at the Faculty of Law of the University of the Americas. She directs the Master's program in complex crime at the same university and teaches postgraduate courses at universities in Ecuador, Argentina, and Bolivia. She holds a postgraduate degree in administrative law from the Federal University of Pernambuco, Brazil, and a PhD in legal and social sciences from the University of the Argentine Social Museum. Her main research areas are gender, criminal law, and complex crime. She is a contributor to several legal journals, author and co-author of several books, and a reviewer for the INTERPOL legal journal Criminalidad, Colombia, and for the journals Foro and Iuris Dictio in Ecuador. ORCID: 0000-0002-3424-8923. Email: marcella.dafonte@udla.edu.ec.

Elba Ravane Alves Amorim holds a PhD in Contemporary Education and a Master's degree in Human Rights from UFPE/CAA; a specialization in Curriculum and Teaching Practice from UFPI; a specialization in Public Security and Citizenship; a law degree from ASCES UNITA; and a Bachelor's degree in Pedagogy. She is the coordinator of the Law program at Asces Unita, the pedagogical coordinator at IDEAR Public Policy Consulting, a lawyer licensed by the Brazilian Bar Association (OAB), and a founding partner of the law firm Ravane Acioli Advocacia. She is part of the Collegiate Coordination of the Elma Novaes Center for Gender Studies and collaborated with the Working Group on Sexual and Gender Diversity and its Intersectionalities of the Pernambuco Court of Justice (GT DSGI-TJPE). She is the author of the book Law, Feminism and Public Policy and co-author of the Feminist Legal Manual. ORCID: 0000-0001-8541-4293. Email: elbaravane@gmail.com.

Viviane Monteiro holds a law degree from the Federal University of Bahia, Brazil; a master's degree in Human Rights and Democracy in Latin America, specializing in International Protection Mechanisms, from the Andean University Simón Bolívar, Ecuador campus; and a doctorate in Criminology from the University of Granada, Spain. She is a visiting professor in postgraduate programs at the Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar, the Instituto de Altos Estudios Nacionales, and other universities in Ecuador and Bolivia; and the professor in charge of the Specialized Legal Clinic in Criminology at the Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Ecuador. She also serves as an expert witness in socio-legal and criminological analysis of gender-based and hate crimes. Her research interests include security measures and criminal dangerousness, human rights and mental health, gender-based violence and criminal evidence, bioethics, and medical liability. ORCID: 0000-0003-0708-908X. Email: vvanems@hotmail.com.

Emilio Terán is a lawyer from the Universidad Técnica Particular de Loja, holds a degree in Police Science from the Universidad San Francisco de Quito, a master's degree in Criminal Law and a master's degree in Human Rights and Strategic Accountability with a specialization in Public Policy from the Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar, Ecuador; a master's degree in Criminology and Security with a specialization in Forensic Criminology, and a PhD in Law, Criminology, and Political Science from the University of Valencia, Spain; and a PhD in Human Rights: Evolution, Protection, and Limits from the Università degli Studi di Palermo, Italy. He completed postdoctoral studies at the Tecnológico de Monterrey, Mexico; and is a researcher at the School of Multidimensional Security at the University of São Paulo, Brazil. He has collaborated with the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. He is an expert witness before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and a university professor. ORCID: 0000-0001-5744-2713. Email: emiliogabrielteranandrade@yahoo.com

Main theme: Corruption and Justice in the Contemporary Political Context

The relationship between the State, spaces of power, and the exercise of different forms of violence is a topic of ongoing discussion. Currently, we observe that one of the ways in which this violence manifests itself is through systemic corruption, understanding corruption as the abuse of power for personal gain. We consider corruption to be a complex structure that creates spaces where legality and illegality become blurred, favoring the expansion of illicit markets. From a legal studies perspective, analyzing the role of judicial systems in relation to this systemic corruption is fundamental.

In this context, the 2025 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), published on February 10, 2026, by Transparency International[1], reveals a critical outlook for global integrity and justice systems. More than two-thirds of the countries assessed (122 out of 182) scored below 50, indicating serious corruption problems. Only five countries scored above 80, and even democracies considered established, such as the United States (64) and Canada (75), showed significant declines.

Specifically, the Transparency International report for the Americas[2] notes that “years of government inaction have eroded democracy and allowed transnational organized crime to grow, directly harming people by undermining human rights, public services, and security.” In fact, scores in the Americas remain stagnant at an average of 42/100 for the fourth consecutive year, with three countries in the region showing critical figures: Venezuela (10), Nicaragua (14), and Haiti (16). The report also notes that “El Salvador (32) and Ecuador (33) are experiencing a decline in transparency and civil liberties”; and that “corruption has allowed transnational organized crime to infiltrate the politics of countries such as Mexico (27), Brazil (35), and Colombia (37), fostering impunity and injustice.”

The available data shed light on the relationship between corruption and justice. The justice system faces several challenges, such as politicization, which hinders the impartiality of those involved; and a lack of procedural impetus, which promotes impunity. Corruption manifests itself in various ways within justice systems, affecting public trust and confidence in the judiciary; moreover, it fosters a culture of corruption.

In this scenario, the idea of ​​a fugitive justice[3] ceases to be a metaphor and becomes a stark reality. Complex criminality has created topographies of invisibility where state sovereignty vanishes, allowing both the money trail and those responsible for large-scale corruption to take refuge in jurisdictional gray areas. This flight from justice is evident in the opacity of transnational financial flows and in the capture of institutions that, although formally present, operate in service of paramilitary networks.

The complexity of this phenomenon demands an interdisciplinary approach that links, among other things, criminal geography with corporate criminology and compliance systems. It is imperative to analyze how legal entities and structures of economic power use the judicial system to evade prosecution. In this scenario, criminal policy faces the challenge of not becoming a policy of omission, in which technological tools and regulatory frameworks, instead of serving transparency, end up shielding criminal elites under the guise of technical legality.

This dossier proposes a space for resistance and academic construction. We invite the research community to submit works that transcend traditional legal analysis, exploring the relationship between corruption, social control, and the new architectures of impunity. Through the proposed thematic axes, we seek to diagnose the causes of this elusive justice and, above all, to chart strategic paths for its return to the service of human dignity and the comprehensive reparation of violated rights.

Thematic Axes

We will preferentially, but not exclusively, receive research articles and essays that fall within the following thematic axes.

1. Criminal Law and Geographies

Bodies Territorialized by Corruption: This axis addresses corruption not as a mere misappropriation of resources, but as a form of power inscribed upon the bodies and territories of the most vulnerable populations. Judicial sextortion, the exchange of sexual favors for procedural advantages, and gender-based crimes are examined, where the body becomes a bargaining chip in the absence of the rule of law. We invite research that uses intersectionality as an analytical tool to unravel how corruption exacerbates structural discrimination. The goal is to move from a purely patrimonial view of harm to a human rights perspective and comprehensive reparations that demand the restoration of violated dignity in scenarios where impunity has been the norm.

Topographies of Invisibility: This theme focuses on how urban design or rural configuration is not neutral, but rather facilitates evasion of justice. It seeks to analyze the approach of so-called "gray zones," where state sovereignty is diluted, such as jungles and mountains, as well as highly exclusive urban spaces (gated communities) and sacrifice zones.

Money Laundering and the City as a Corporate Haven: This theme invites investigation into how corruption and complex criminality utilize the real estate market and urban development. It analyzes the city as a mechanism for laundering capital, where concrete and luxury act as a veil that masks and perpetuates impunity through various illicit activities.

Transnational Ecocide: This theme explores the intersection between ecosystem destruction, green criminology, illicit markets, and the justice system's oversight and response to combat this phenomenon. Proposals should analyze how transnational criminal networks, camouflaged within legal corporate structures, exploit the lack of state control in border areas to plunder natural resources, shifting legal responsibility to jurisdictions of impunity.

2. Administration of Justice, Co-optation, and Organized Crime

Algorithmic Justice and the Risks of Opacity: In today's militarized and technologically advanced world, the use of Artificial Intelligence and Big Data in judicial management constitutes a double-edged sword. While it can facilitate oversight, a lack of algorithmic transparency can create "black boxes" that conceal acts of corruption. This also includes the preventive compliance algorithms used by banking institutions to detect early signs of corruption. This section seeks to analyze how technologies can be used to detect acts of corruption and how digital biases can lead to procedural violations.

Criminal Policy of Omission: This section invites a critical analysis of contemporary criminal policy, questioning when the design of laws and state prosecution priorities are deliberately configured to allow certain corrupt sectors to remain in the shadows. It aims to explore the tension between the discourse of security and the reality of a fugitive justice system that vanishes before political and economic power. In this scenario, it becomes imperative to examine the selective use or omission of special investigative techniques (SITs), such as undercover agents, controlled deliveries, and wiretapping. We will analyze whether these tools, designed to dismantle complex corrupt and criminal structures, are underutilized or whether their lack of effective implementation constitutes a state tactic to guarantee impunity and allow organized crime to consolidate itself at the national, regional, or transnational level.

Judicial Capture and Organized Crime: The symbiosis between state and private actors has consolidated networks that capture both institutions and private companies. This section analyzes how organized crime conditions judicial independence and how corporate law firms defend organized crime in contexts of high violence. Special attention is given to the phenomenon of "justice under threat," where fear becomes a procedural management tool that erodes the impartiality of judicial actors.

Architectures of Noncompliance: This section invites investigation into the spatial and structural dimensions of white-collar crime. In the context of fugitive justice, the company is not only an economic actor but also a device for concealing illicit criminal markets. Thus, this focus area seeks to analyze how complex organizations use business activity as a disguise to facilitate, finance, or conceal criminal activity, as well as the evolution of criminology with a view to understanding the dynamics embedded in corporate criminology.

3. Challenges and Resistance to Corruption

Structural Challenges and Supranational Impunity: When states develop strategies to evade judgments and delegitimize international bodies, the effectiveness of international law is called into question. This section examines the fight against impunity in scenarios where criminal structures are supranational, challenging states' capacity to guarantee social welfare.

Governance and Counter-Hegemonic Resistance: In the face of state violence and corruption, struggles for transparency arise. This section explores the role of citizen oversight, digital activism, and the counter-hegemonic use of law to obtain comprehensive reparations. We want to discuss administrative reforms that seek to address nepotism, inefficiency, and other practices that are accentuated and increased alongside corruption. We also want to reflect on whistleblowing as a tool of counter-hegemonic resistance within power structures.

Guidelines

• Articles, reviews, and interviews should be submitted through our website, using the Submissions button, by Monday, July 6, 2026.
• Contributions may be written in Spanish, English, or Portuguese.
• Only contributions that comply with the journal's editorial policy, style guide, and citation guidelines will be accepted.
• All contributions must be original and cannot be submitted simultaneously to other journals.
• Submission of articles, essays, reviews, and interviews implies knowledge and acceptance of our code of ethics.

[1] https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2025

[2] https://www.transparency.org/es/press/indice-percepcion-corrupcion-2025-americas-perjudica-vida-personas-exacerba-violencia

[3] This concept was elaborated by Maximiliano Rusconi in his book, La justicia prófuga. Por una refundación del sistema judicial (2024).