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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... region's judiciaries seems hardly to have tapped the potential or dampened the enthusiasm for arming new programs. Courts, which once regarded the reforms with utmost suspicion, now have become proponents in their own right. They have ...
... region's countries, many of them written by observers with substantial experience both with local judiciaries and with the reform programs.2 Despite their insider's view, or better-documented outsider's perspective, the authors have ...
... region's judiciaries were widely regarded as incapable of performing their basic functions in a fair and competent manner.4 Whether couched as an effort to improve an essential public service or raise the missing pillar of democratic ...
... region, there are criticisms of policymaking by unaccountable 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 ...
... region. See Maier et al. (1993) and Davis and Lillo (1996). 26. These include the delegation of judicial functions to untrained courtroom staff, the complete failure of the police to cooperate with the judicial investigation, the ...
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 |