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, or where they existed, prosecutors, was usually minimal. Prosecutors or instructional judges were often called the “secretaries of the police,” meaning that they simply signed off on whatever the police presented as findings ...
... judge for the intermediate stage (deciding whether the case will proceed to trial), a trial judge or panel of judges, and still a fourth judge who oversees the execution of the judgment. The principle is definitely not part of the U.S ...
... judge's findings. France in fact, as the inquisitorial hold out, brings roughly 95 percent of its cases to some kind of ... Judges in these countries also have a more prominent role in the courtroom, commonly questioning witnesses or ...
... judges and police have simply continued as they always did. In the case of prosecutors, this has meant an emphasis on the written expediente, a tendency to let police define the nature of the investigation with the prosecutors only ...
... judges are usually less enamored of the accent on efficiency. They commonly argue that they are already overburdened with work and that the only solution is more judges and more courtrooms. This presupposes that, whatever number of ...
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 |