Call for Papers: Iuris Dictio, Thematic Dossier No. 39 on the Crisis of Multilateralism and its Impacts on Contemporary Law

Iuris Dictio is a peer reviewed, open access law journal founded in 1998 and attached to the Colegio de Jurisprudencia of Universidad San Francisco de Quito USFQ, in Quito, Ecuador. It is edited by USFQ Press and runs on the Open Journal Systems platform. The journal publishes twice a year, in June and December, and has operated an online first model since 2023, so accepted articles appear online before they are folded into a numbered issue. Its two official languages are Spanish and English.

ISSN (electronic): 2528-7834. ISSN (print, until 2022): 1390-6402. The journal is indexed and catalogued in DOAJ, SciELO, MIAR, ERIHPLUS, Latindex 2.0, MLA, LatinREV, Latino Americana, vLex, EZB, OAJI, REBIUN, Dialnet, BASE and Google Scholar.

Dossier No. 39 asks contributors to examine, from a critical perspective, the present crisis of multilateralism and its repercussions for law at the global, regional and national levels. The call situates the problem in the weakening of multilateral spaces, normative fragmentation and rising geopolitical disputes, which together have put the architecture of global governance in question. It points to recurrent blockages in the United Nations Security Council, the paralysis of the World Trade Organization Appellate Body and the resulting turn to unilateral responses and tariff disputes, and the difficulty of reaching binding climate commitments on finance, energy transition, loss and damage and common but differentiated responsibilities.

The call also notes the tendency of some states to withdraw from, defund or contest international organisations, treaties and mechanisms, including the World Health Organization, the UN Human Rights Council, the Paris Agreement, the International Criminal Court, the Inter-American human rights system and international arbitration including investment arbitration. It invites work on the widening gap between formal norms and effective compliance, and on the shift towards bilateral agreements, informal fora and coalitions of like-minded states such as the G7, the G20, BRICS+ and regional trade arrangements. A Global South and Latin American lens is explicitly welcomed, covering debt, climate finance, energy transition, investment arbitration, regional cooperation, protection of the Amazon, human mobility, regulation of new technologies and equitable access to medicines.

• Crisis of multilateralism, transformations of international law and critical approaches to the international legal order.
• Postcolonial, decolonial and critical approaches to the crisis of multilateralism.
• Difficulties in protecting human rights amid loss of institutional trust, nationalist discourse and democratic backsliding.
• International trade, tariff disputes and the stalling of multilateral dispute settlement systems.
• Investment law and state sovereignty in the face of global crises.
• Environmental law, climate diplomacy and the limits of green multilateralism.
• Migration law, refugee systems and legal responses to humanitarian crises.
• Peace, security, international justice and the role of courts against great power politics.
• International tax law and fiscal cooperation in a fragmented world.
• Transnational corporations and legal responsibility in contexts of global fragmentation.
• Artificial intelligence and the challenges of global digital governance.
• Constitutionalism and tensions between national legal orders and international norms.
• Regional cooperation systems as an alternative or a complement to universal multilateralism.
• The Global South and the crisis of multilateralism, demands for reform of the international order and disputes over a more representative global governance.

The dossier accepts theoretical or doctrinal analyses, analyses of national or international regulations, jurisprudential commentary and comparative analyses. Interdisciplinary approaches are welcome provided they engage the theme and remain in clear dialogue with the legal field.

Alongside the dossier, the call is open for articles on any area of law for the Miscelanea section, book reviews for the Resenas section and interviews for the Entrevistas section. Reviews must cover books published no more than two years before the issue year and must not exceed 18,000 characters. Interviews must not exceed 25,000 characters. Reviews and interviews are not sent to peer review; the editorial team decides on their publication. All submissions must be original and must not be under simultaneous consideration elsewhere.

The journal's section policy states that work is accepted from researchers at master's or doctoral level, or with more than five years of legal practice. The submission checklist adds that a student author should be at master's or doctoral level, or otherwise a practising lawyer or an independent researcher. Authors must state their institutional affiliation, or record themselves as an independent researcher where they have none. The call sets no nationality restriction and articles may be written in Spanish or English, so authors outside Ecuador can submit.

• Length: 20,000 to 40,000 characters excluding spaces for dossier and Miscelanea articles.
• Abstract of up to 750 characters excluding spaces, roughly ten lines, in both Spanish and English, with a maximum of six keywords also in both languages.
• Times New Roman 12, single spacing, no tabs, margins of 2.5 cm top and bottom and 3 cm left and right.
• Title centred, size 14, bold, no more than 15 words. Below it, aligned right, the author's name, then the institution, city and country, then the email address, then the ORCID identifier.
• Any research funding must be explained in a first footnote. A second footnote titled the author contribution statement must record the participation of each co-author.
• Citation and referencing follow APA 6th edition. Footnotes carry substantive notes only, never bibliographic references or URLs; all reference information belongs in the bibliography.
• The journal's submission template must be used, and the anonymity instructions must be followed for peer reviewed sections.

Every manuscript first passes an initial editorial screening for fit with the journal's scope, compliance with the author guidelines, topicality, originality and publication ethics, including a Turnitin similarity report. A manuscript may then move to peer review, be returned for formal adjustments or be rejected with reasons.

Dossier and Miscelanea manuscripts that clear that screening go to at least two external specialist reviewers under double blind peer review. Reviewers return one of three verdicts: publishable, not publishable, or publishable with modifications. Where modifications are required the author must incorporate them and complete the certificate of modifications issued by the journal. The journal reports an average of six months from submission to publication, covering review, the publication decision, author revisions, editing, layout and the author's final check of the typeset text. Dossier No. 39 is scheduled for the January to June 2027 period.

Publication and access are free. USFQ Press and the Colegio de Jurisprudencia meet the editing and publication costs internally, and the journal states that authors pay no article processing charge, which is why it operates no waiver or subsidy scheme. DOAJ records the journal as having no APC. Articles are published under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike 4.0 International licence, authors retain copyright and grant the journal the right of first publication, and metadata is exposed through OAI-PMH 2.0.

Articles must be uploaded to the journal's OJS platform after registering a user account at the journal site. Submissions must follow the journal's author guidelines and publication rules. The last date to send articles is 15 December 2026. Questions may be directed to the editorial office at revistaiurisdictio@usfq.edu.ec or to the dossier coordinator Sebastian Abad Jara at sebastian.abadj@gmail.com.