Envisioning Reform: Conceptual and Practical Obstacles to Improving Judicial Performance in Latin AmericaJudicial reform became an important part of the agenda for development in Latin America early in the 1980s, when countries in the region started the process of democratization. Connections began to be made between judicial performance and market-based growth, and development specialists turned their attention to “second generation” institutional reforms. Although considerable progress has been made already in strengthening the judiciary and its supporting infrastructure (police, prosecutors, public defense counsel, the private bar, law schools, and the like), much remains to be done. Linn Hammergren’s book aims to turn the spotlight on the problems in the movement toward judicial reform in Latin America over the past two decades and to suggest ways to keep the movement on track toward achieving its multiple, though often conflicting, goals. After Part I’s overview of the reform movement’s history since the 1980s, Part II examines five approaches that have been taken to judicial reform, tracing their intellectual origins, historical and strategic development, the roles of local and international participants, and their relative success in producing positive change. Part III builds on this evaluation of the five partial approaches by offering a synthetic critique aimed at showing how to turn approaches into strategies, how to ensure they are based on experiential knowledge, and how to unite separate lines of action. |
From inside the book
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... judges.13 Judicial councils and other new governance mechanisms demonstrate no marked improvement in the quality of budgetary or human resource management and often have entered into confrontations with the organizations they are ...
... judge and its presentation to the trial judge (in some cases the same person) in the form of a written dossier (expediente). The process lent itself to a series of abuses, many of which were arguably not a necessary consequence of the ...
... judges and other officials and staff and to augment the general efficiency of courtroom and systemwide administration.31 Local reformers were particularly active in promoting the first elements. Their interest, like the code reforms ...
... judge or judges have access to the dossier once it is completed, the instructional judge has no further participation in their deliberations. As a rule, European trial judges take a much more active part in the proceedings than do their ...
... judges tended to be handled by a single judicial actor. The public ministry, where it even existed, often played a highly symbolic role in the proceedings, and much of the real investigation fell to a single judge.11 This individual ...
Other editions - View all
Envisioning Reform: Improving Judicial Performance in Latin America Linn Hammergren Limited preview - 2010 |
Envisioning Reform: Improving Judicial Performance in Latin America Linn A. Hammergren No preview available - 2007 |