ntorres

Books

The InterAmerican Court of Human Rights, Routledge, London, 2022.

El control de convencionalidad de las normas constitucionales. EAE, Saarbrücken, 2015.

Control de convencionalidad : deber complementario del juez constitucional peruano y el juez interamericano (similitudes, diferencias y convergencias). EAE, Saarbrücken, 2013.

Journal articles

Control de convencionalidad en el Sistema Interamericano de Derechos Humanos, Eunomia. Revista en Cultura de la Legalidad, No 9,  178-185.

Control de convencionalidad y protección multinivel de los derechos humanos en el Sistema Interamericano de Derechos Humanos, Derecho PUCP, Nº 70, 347-369,

• Zuniga, Natalia Torres (2026). Blueberry Workers, Legal Change, Resistance, and Accommodation in the Coastal North of Peru. Law and Critique. ISSN 0957-8536. doi: 10.1007/s10978-026-09439-x. Full text in Research Archive
• Zúñiga, Natalia Torres; Eslava, Luis & Cortés-Nieto, Johanna Del Pilar (2026). Extractive constitutionalism: a Latin American approach. Third World Quarterly. ISSN 0143-6597. p. 1–14. doi: 10.1080/01436597.2026.2718187. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This article introduces extractive constitutionalism as a conceptual device to explain how Latin American constitutional legal orders perform a constitutive function in relation to extractivism – a form of social ordering based on the extensive exploitation of nature and other human and more-than-human resources for accumulation and economic profit. Drawing on a material approach to constitutionalism and grounding our analysis in the contributions to this collection, we argue that various forms of extractivism have historically shaped Latin American constitutional legal frameworks, and that state law has organised, legitimised and institutionalised these extractivisms. In this context we approach constitutions as including the material rules, institutional arrangements and legal imaginaries entangled with extraction, from mining, oil and agriculture to labour, carbon markets and global care chains. The contributions show how Latin American constitutional legal orders organise territories and other sites of extraction in everyday life, giving legal form to social and economic relations that entrench extractivism, its logic and its consequences. Crucially, the concept of extractive constitutionalism also opens avenues for reflection on the possibilities of legal redress through resistance to extractivism and imagining alternative legal futures.

• Zúñiga, Natalia Torres (2026). Law and agrarian extractivism in Colombia: property, public wasteland and improvement. Third World Quarterly. ISSN 0143-6597. p. 1–21. doi: 10.1080/01436597.2026.2687722. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This article examines the relationship between law and agrarian extractivism in Colombia by analysing the 2016 legislation that created the country’s ‘zones of interest for rural, economic, and social development’ (the ZIDRES law), the authoritative documents that guided its creation and the Constitutional Court’s ruling that upheld its constitutionality. This examination demonstrates how state legal institutions such as wasteland (baldíos) and property are two sides of the same coin, performing defining, regulative and distributive functions that give legal form to a political economy of agrarian extractivism based on a waste/value dichotomy. While baldíos is used to portray the region of La Altillanura as empty, under-utilised land, private property helps ‘improve’ La Altillanura into ‘proper’ land as it enables the extraction of value and economic profit in the context of large-scale agricultural projects. The article highlights how, in enabling the concentration of resources in private hands and securing them through exclusive property rights, the state gives legal form to social relations of expulsion, exploitation and coercive inclusion of people into the dynamics of this extractivism.

• Zuniga, Natalia Torres (2026). Forestry extractivism, public/private divide and constitutional reform in Chile. Journal of Law and Political Economy (JLPE). Full text in Research Archive
• Zuniga, Natalia Torres (2024). Conventionality control in the Inter-American system of human rights and its reception in the Peruv,ian legal order. In Aust, Helmut Philipp; Krieger, Heike & Lange, Felix (Ed.), Research Handbook on International Law and Domestic Legal Systems. Edward Elgar Publishing. ISSN 9781800373150. p. 238–259. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This Research Handbook examines the complex relationship between international law and domestic legal systems. An interdisciplinary range of experts analyse the topic from historical, conceptual, critical and doctrinal perspectives, setting the tone for future reflections on the development of the international legal order. Chapter authors critically discuss the evolution of core understandings of the relationship between international and domestic law, and how this has been affected by specific actors and contexts in a changing global order, particularly imperialism, decolonisation, the post-Cold War era, and more recent trends, such as geopolitical shifts and the rise of populism. They examine concepts such as monism, dualism and pluralism, as well as the legal techniques and doctrines employed to govern the relationship, including approaches to treaty making, constitutional protection and conventionality control. The Research Handbook ultimately champions fresh perspectives on interlinkages between the international and the domestic in a multipolar world. The Research Handbook on International Law and Domestic Legal Systems is a vital resource for students, scholars and practitioners of public international law, constitutional law, comparative law, and legal theory as well as readers with a background in international relations.

• Zuniga, Natalia Torres (2021). The image of The Inter-American Court of Human Rights as an agent of democratic transformation. A tool of self-validation. Araucaria. Revista Iberoamericana de Filosofía, Política y Humanidades. ISSN 1575-6823. p. 483–504. doi: 10.12795/ARAUCARIA.2021.I46.24. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This paper provides a critical analysis of the premises and arguments put forward by the Ius Constitutionale Commune en America Latina project to ground the image of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights as an agent of democratic transformation. It highlights three critical aspects: 1. the profile of the Court is constructed by legal scholars relying on self-validation and selfreferentiality, 2. that image validates the idea that lawyers and the judiciary are agents of transformation ruling over local spaces from above, thereby discarding people as the central subjects of change and democratization, and 3. the concept of representative democracy becomes a device that secures the self-validating dynamics of the image of the Court as democracy builder.

• Zuniga, Natalia Torres (2016). Control de normas constitucionales por la Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos. In Machetti, Pablo Santolaya & Wences, Isabel (Ed.), La América de los derechos. Centro de Estudios Politicos y Constitucionales. ISSN 9788425917103. p. 483–507. Full text in Research Archive

View all works in NVA

• Zuniga, Natalia Torres (2022). The Inter American Court of Human Rights. The Legitimacy of International Courts and Tribunals. Routledge. ISBN 9781032061375. 213 p. Full text in Research Archive
• Zuniga, Natalia Torres (2015). El control de convencionalidad de las normas constitucionales : impacto de las sentencias de la Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos en la teoría del cambio constitucional. Editorial Académica Española. ISBN 9783659091179. 111 p. Full text in Research Archive
• Zuniga, Natalia Torres (2013). El control de convencionalidad : deber complementario del juez constitucional peruano y el juez interamericano (similitudes, differencias y convergencias). Editorial Académica Española. ISBN 9783659078309. Full text in Research Archive

View all works in NVA

• Zuniga, Natalia Torres (2025). Material Constitution and Agrarian Extractivism in Colombia. ZIDRES Law, Land Distribution and Exploitation of People and Nature. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  The article analyses the constitution of Colombia as a foundational legal framework of agrarian extractivism by examining the Areas of Interest for Rural, Economic and Social Development Law of 2016 (ZIDRES law). The paper introduces the concept of the material constitution as distinct but interlinked to the written constitution of 1991, highlighting the features of coercive inclusion and reproduction of exploitation as governing function forms of the State in contexts of agrarian extractivism and expansion of the agricultural frontiers. It analyzes the Constitutional Court's interpretation of the ZIDRES law, particularly its reasoning regarding the alliances between companies and peasants, resource allocation, and property rights. The article recalls the function of the State in establishing the operational and legal rules and reproducing ideologies supporting extractivism through legal institutions such as property and freedom of contract. In doing so, it reflects on how the material constitution is giving form and validating land concentration in the hands of a few, the coercive inclusion of the rural poor and peasants, leading to their exploitation and dispossession.

• Zuniga, Natalia Torres (2024). Paper "Extractive constitutionalism: a latinamerican approach". Full text in Research Archive
• Cavallero, Luci; Zuniga, Natalia Torres & Eslava, Luis (2024). "De Facto" Constitutional Reform and Feminist Resistance: Financial Extractivism in Argentina". Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Natalia Torres and Luis Eslava coorganised the key-note lecture. About the lecture This lecture will be given by Lucía Cavallero on financial extractivism in Argentina. Lucía Cavallero holds a PhD in Social Sciences and is a Sociologist from the University of Buenos Aires. Currently, she holds a position as a professor of "Feminist Economics" at the National University of Tres de Febrero and also at the University of Avellanera. Lucía is a co-author of "A Feminist Reading of Debt", which was published in Argentina by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation (2019), in Brazil by Criação Humana Editora (2019), in Italy by Ombre Corte (forthcoming), and in English by Pluto Press (2021). Along with Verónica Gago and Silvia Federici, she is also a co-author of the book "Who owes whom? Transnational Essays on Financial Disobedience" published by Tinta Limón in Argentina and Editorial Elefante in Brazil. Her latest co-authored book titled "The House as a Laboratory: Finance, Housing, and Essential Work" is set to be published in 2024 by Common Notions in the USA. Lucía is an active member of the "Ni Una Menos Collective", where she works to articulate the agenda of economic violence.

• Zuniga, Natalia Torres (2024). Workshop: Extractive Constitutionalism - Precarity, Nature and Resistance in Latin America. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Extractive economies based on the depletion of natural and human resources anchor their legitimacy in multi-level and cross-temporal constitutional arrangements. This is a reality in Latin America and many other contexts. Bringing together scholars from across Latin America and beyond, the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights, in collaboration with La Trobe University, is hosting a two-day closed workshop to examine the central role of constitutional law in the exploitation of nature and society. The region’s deep-seated neoliberal crisis, and the complex yet ever present popular resistance to it, serve as the workshop’s immediate frameworks of reference. The workshop takes place from 18 to 19 March at the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights. Aside from the opening keynote lecture with Lucía Cavallero, the workshop is closed to the public. However, if you have an interest in participating as an observer to the workshop, you may contact Natalia Torres Zuniga to express your interest and get more information.

• Zuniga, Natalia Torres (2024). Book roundtable on the material constitution. Full text in Research Archive
• Zuniga, Natalia Torres (2024). Storyboard."The Law of the Land, a Legal Study of Land Concentration, violence, and Racism in the Andes". Full text in Research Archive
• Zuniga, Natalia Torres (2023). Race and Peruvian constitution. Full text in Research Archive
• Zuniga, Natalia Torres (2023). “Constitutional foundations of the political economy of Agrarian extractivism in Colombia. The constitutive role of law and the distributive function of the State. Full text in Research Archive
• Zuniga, Natalia Torres (2023). Blueberry workers in Peru, agrarian extractivism, work rights. Full text in Research Archive
• Zuniga, Natalia Torres (2023). BLUE GOLD, EXTRACTIVISM AND PERUVIAN CONSTITUTION. Full text in Research Archive
• Zuniga, Natalia Torres (2023). Paper Law and Forestry in Chile: neoliberal extractivism, distribution and Ideology. Full text in Research Archive
• Zuniga, Natalia Torres (2022). El derecho de la tierra. Un estudio legal de concentracion de la tierra, violencia y racismo. Full text in Research Archive
• Zuniga, Natalia Torres (2022). Work in progress. Theoretical framework. Land concentration, agribusiness, and racialization in Peru. Full text in Research Archive
• Zuniga, Natalia Torres (2022). Economic Constitution in Peru: land concentration, agribusiness, and racialization. Full text in Research Archive
• Zuniga, Natalia Torres (2022). “El derecho de la tierra en los Andes: estudio legal sobre la concentración de la tierra, violencia, precariedad, y neoliberalismo”. Full text in Research Archive
• Zuniga, Natalia Torres (2021). Presentation of the project "The law of the land: a legal study of land concentration, violence and racism in the Andes". Full text in Research Archive

View all works in NVA