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
... operations, which suggests that it may itself require modification.10 The various Latin American approaches to reform in some sense arise as extrapolations from this traditional model and, to the extent they do, may be incorporating its ...
... operations. Sector is itself a vague term, but it is usually taken to encompass those institutions most closely related to the courts—police, prosecution, public defense, and the private bar. How reformers define improvement, what means ...
... operations, it has still not been even moderately successful anywhere in just getting the various actors to carry out their functions according to the new legal mandate. The inquisitorial habits, along with numerous traditional vices ...
... operations are given short shrift or not covered at all. In some sense, this may be better than an innovative but uninformed effort to describe them, but, in light of the human tendency to follow past habits until forced to change, it ...
... operations. Alternatively, they might be very capable operational staff that had never given a thought to the organizational requirements that made their work possible. In some cases, the new procedures simply had to go into effect ...
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 |