Envisioning Reform: Improving Judicial Performance in Latin America

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Penn State Press, Nov 1, 2010 - Law

Judicial 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.

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Contents

Twenty Years of Reforms and Not a Consensus in Sight
1
FIVE APPROACHES TO JUDICIAL REFORM
25
Human Rights Crime Control and Other Unlikely Bedfellows
27
Increasing the Efficiency and Efficacy of Court Actions
55
3 Developing a Professional Institutionally Independent Judiciary
97
Legal Assistance Special Courts Alternative Dispute Resolution and Beyond
131
5 Strengthening the Judiciarys Role as a Check on Other Branches of Government
170
PROBLEMS AND REMEDIES
211
Why the Parts Dont Add Up to a Coherent Whole
213
7 Improving the Knowledge Base for Judicial Reform Programs
241
8 Toward a New Strategic Model
271
9 A Political Agenda for Reforming the Reforms
306
References
321
Index
340
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References to this book

Court Reform
Adriaan Bedner
No preview available - 2008

About the author (2010)

Linn Hammergren is Senior Public Sector Specialist for the Latin American and Caribbean Region at the World Bank.

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