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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... powers for supreme courts, • Promotion of public-interest law and means of protecting collective and diffuse interests, • Creation of specialized courts, • Creation of small claims and other courts for poor populations, Integration of ...
... powers, outside of the ordinary court system, and • Dejudicialization of some issues traditionally seen by the courts. This is only a partial, illustrative list, but it should be evident that it contains internal contradictions ...
... powers and resources have increased the judiciary's impact so that how they use them has become much more important. Reform programs had not anticipated these problems and have yet. 13. See Wilson et al. (2004) on Costa Rica and Fuentes ...
... power, nonrecognition of constitutional guarantees, and other illegal actions.51 Although several courts in the region historically had these powers, they used them rarely and with extreme deference to governmental preferences ...
... power to courts that still had not undergone other more basic reforms. Constitutional courts and chambers were often politicized, they did not always have the most eminent jurists as their members, and their decisions, especially on ...
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 |