Fri, 10 June 2022
Virtual seminar
13:00 – 14:00 CEST
Abstract
Legislative reforms epitomize a shift in the respective understanding that the legal systems in Latin America have of child marriage. With the increase in the legal age of marriage, the equal treatment of women and men and the reduction of parental influence, many legislators took action to combat child marriage. The statistics on child marriages and early informal unions do not reflect the reforms so far. Two factors have prevented the numbers from declining. First, the reforms only have an impact on civil marriages. Civil marriages, however, are not the only relevant framework for early relationships. Moreover, early informal unions, where couples live together unmarried, claim a great share because the social importance of marriage has declined parts of Latin America. Furthermore, customary or religious marriage is more important to indigenous communities as well as in the poor, rural population. Secondly, the legal treatment of child marriages is only one factor out of many. Social pressure to marry early, early sexual relationships and early pregnancy, poverty, lack of economic and educational perspectives, and also ethnic affiliation and beliefs can promote early marriages or early informal unions.
About the speaker
Denise Wiedemann studied law in Leipzig (first state exam in law), European law and comparative law in Lisbon (LL.M.), and administration of justice in Meißen (Diplom). During her time as a doctoral student she was a visiting researcher at the Centre de recherche de droit international of the Université Panthéon Assas (Paris II). Her dissertation examining conflict-of-law questions in relation to the cross-border enforcement of judgments was awarded the Otto Hahn Medal as well as the Dr Feldbausch-Stiftung doctoral prize. In 2015 she began working as a research assistant at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law, where she initially assisted with the preparation of the IPRspr. In 2017 she assumed the leadership of the Latin America desk. After legal clerkship stations in Brasilia and New York, she sat for the second state exam in law in 2018. Denise Wiedemann is a lecturer at Bucerius Law School and at the Universities of Leipzig and Hamburg. She is a member of the German-Lusitanian Lawyers’ Association and the Consejo Consultivo Internacional of the Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León, México.
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