About the Journal

The Revista de Derecho Público: Teoría y método (Journal of Public Law: Theory and methods) is an online-only, open access, free and biannual scientific publication aimed at the international community of Public Law scholars. As a hallmark, the Journal intends to gather theoretical and methodological studies addressing concerns beyond national legal orders. In this sense, the Journal aims to preserve the academic inspiration and working methods of the Seminario de Teoría y Metodología de Derecho Público, regularly held since May 2013, which has allowed to articulate discussions among Administrative Law scholars from more than twenty universities.

Nowadays, both national and international Public Law has experienced a great development. In this light, a significant amount of journals, either academic or aimed at legal practitioners, focus on the interpretation and clarification of the prescriptive sense of norms in legal systems. However, the editorial approach of the Revista de Derecho Público: Teoría y método is partially different. While positive law, as a given reality, is intended to be a departure point, the Journal is mainly oriented towards theoretical and methodological goals. This is to say, it aims to focus on legal comparison; on the historical, economic and social keys underlying positive legal rules; on the concepts and theories that allow ordering public legal rules in a logical manner. Accordingly, the Journal welcomes contributions that pay special attention to theoretical issues, which, thanks to their capacity to go beyond local and national legal particularities, allow the exchange and dialog among Public Law scholars from different legal cultures.

Given its international vocation, the Journal has reduced formal requirements for publication as much as possible. The main and almost only criterion for accepting a paper is its academic quality and its potential contribution to enrich the global theoretical or methodogical discussion. In this sense, the Journal has neither thematic sections nor a required language to publish –although the editorial team acknowledges Spanish and English as preferential languages for publication-. Finally, style guidelines do never function as an ex ante requirement.

The Journal aims to publish not only studies but also related critical comments. To that end, the publication process consists of three phases. Firstly, the Journal publishes every study as soon as it is evaluated positively by reviewers. From that moment on, a free forum for critical dialog opens up through the Journal’s online platform. Lastly, the final version of every issue gathers already published studies along with a selection of critical comments deserving to accompany them permanently, in view of their academic value.