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Beyond High Courts: The Justice Complex in Latin America is a much-needed volume that will make a significant contribution to the growing fields of comparative law and politics and Latin American legal institutions. The book moves these research agendas beyond the study of high courts by offering theoretically and conceptually rich empirical analyses of a set of critical supranational, national, and subnational justice sector institutions that are generally neglected in the literature. The chapters examine the region’s large federal systems (Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico), courts in Chile and Venezuela, and the main supranational tribunal in the region, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. Aimed at students of comparative legal institutions while simultaneously offering lessons for practitioners charged with designing such institutions, the volume advances our understanding of the design of justice institutions, how their form and function change over time, what causes those changes, and what consequences they have. The volume also pays close attention to how justice institutions function as a system, exploring institutional interactions across branches and among levels of government (subnational, national, supranational) and analyzing how they help to shape, and are shaped by, politics and law. Incorporating the institutions examined in the volume into the literature on comparative legal institutions deepens our understanding of justice systems and how their component institutions can both bolster and compromise democracy and the rule of law.
Contributors: Matthew C. Ingram, Diana Kapiszewski, Azul A. Aguiar-Aguilar, Ernani Carvalho, Natália Leitão, Catalina Smulovitz, John Seth Alexander, Robert Nyenhuis, Sídia Maria Porto Lima, José Mário Wanderley Gomes Neto, Danilo Pacheco Fernandes, Louis Dantas de Andrade, Mary L. Volcansek, and Martin Shapiro.
"The most important contribution of Beyond High Courts is shedding light on fascinating institutions that have received, quite undeservedly, little scholarly attention. In addition, these remarkable chapters offer interesting analytical and theoretical lessons. Readers from different disciplines that are interested in law and courts or socio-legal studies will find many gems in each chapter included within this edited volume." —Bulletin of Latin American Research
Matthew C. Ingram is associate professor of political science at the University at Albany, State University of New York. He is the author of Crafting Courts in New Democracies: The Politics of Subnational Judicial Reform in Brazil and Mexico.
Diana Kapiszewski is associate professor of government at Georgetown University. She is author, co-editor, and co-author of a number of books, including High Courts and Economic Governance in Argentina and Brazil.
List of Figures and Tables
1. Introduction: Beyond High Courts by Matthew C. Ingram and Diana Kapiszewski
2. Reforms to the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Brazil, Chile, and Mexico: The Role of Justice Sector Interest Groups by Azul A. Aguiar-Aguilar
3. Operationalizing and Measuring Prosecutorial Independence: The Brazilian Case by Ernani Carvalho and Natália Leitão
4. Public Defense and Access to Justice in a Federal Context: Who Gets What, and How, in the Argentinean Provinces by Catalina Smulovitz
5. Judging Elections: Electoral Courts and Democracy in Latin America’s Federal Systems by Diana Kapiszewski, John Seth Alexander, and Robert Nyenhuis
6. The Electoral Court and Party Politics in Brazil by Sídia Maria Porto Lima
7. Watching the Watchmen: The Role of the Brazilian Supreme Court’s Chief Justice in Checking Lower Court Activism by José Mário Wanderley Gomes Neto, Ernani Carvalho, Danilo Pacheco Fernandes, and Louise Dantas de Andrade
8. Judicial Councils in Mexico: Design, Roles, and Origins at the National and Subnational Levels by Matthew C. Ingram
9. Transnational Protection of Human Rights in Latin America by Mary L. Volcansek and Matthew C. Ingram
10. Comparative Law and Courts Studies: Some Reflections and Directions by Martin Shapiro
List of Contributors
Index