The Dominican legal system is in a serious situation, because of the introduction of foreign codes and statutes into the country's legislation, threatening its very existence, according to a complaint by Victor Joaquin Castellanos, president of the recently created Dominican Law Academy.
The academy was created with the aim of ending the "periodic mutilations" that Dominican legislations suffers, and he said that one of the main evidence for this can be found in the Penal process Code that is currently in effect.
Even though he did not consider all of the code to be negative, he said that it has been grafted into the judicial order without previous training for magistrates and society.
The jurist said, moreover, that another example of the mutilations of Dominican legislation is the Law on Real Estate that was approved in spite of the fact that the previous legislation, the Law of Land Rights was fairly adequate.
He said, "This new law has confused magistrates and lawyers who, at times, do not know how to proceed in the courts."
Castellanos cited other threats, such as the legislative proposal to reform the Civil Procedure Code, which would incorporate aspects of the Uruguayan model, as well as the proposal for the Family Code that, if the Civil Code is approved, will become a brochure.
The noted lawyer said, "If we do not take a proactive stance, we will end up in a legal order made up of a mosaic of legislation without any links between the pieces and that are at odds with our judicial traditions, and this is why we have founded the Academy."

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