Reports of scandal and corruption have led to the downfall of numerous political leaders in Latin America in recent years. What conditions have developed that allow for the exposure of wrongdoing and the accountability of leaders? Enforcing the Rule of Law examines how elected officials in Latin American democracies have come under scrutiny from new forms of political control, and how these social accountability mechanisms have been successful in counteracting corruption and the limitations of established institutions. This volume reveals how legal claims, media interventions, civic organizations, citizen committees, electoral observation panels, and other watchdog groups have become effective tools for monitoring political authorities. Their actions have been instrumental in exposing government crime, bringing new issues to the public agenda, and influencing or even reversing policy decisions. Enforcing the Rule of Law presents compelling accounts of the emergence of civic action movements and their increasing political influence in Latin America, and sheds new light on the state of democracy in the region.

This study describes a Latin American legal system which punishes only the poor and a democratic state which fails to control its own agents' arbitrary practices. The contributors argue that judicial reform cannot be seperated from human rights and that justice must be made available to the poor.

The volume takes a broad view of recent social, political, and economic developments in Latin America. It contains six essays, focused on salient and cross-cutting themes, that try to construct a thread or narrative about the highly diverse region, highlighting its main idiosyncrasies and analyzing where it might be headed in coming years. While the essays recognize considerable advances, they also point out setbacks and missed opportunities that have stood in the way of sustained progress. Strengthening state capacity emerges as a significant challenge.

The authors examine the way in which international organizations rationalize and prioritize their reform proposals and agenda in Latin America; how reform agendas are implemented and followed up (or not); how international donor organizations relate to national governments and civil society, and to

The book proposes an informational theory of constitutional review highlighting the mediator role of constitutional courts in democratic conflict solving.

Over the past two decades, legal thought and practice in Latin America have changed dramatically: new constitutions or constitutional reforms have consolidated democratic rule, fundamental innovations have been introduced in state institutions, social movements have turned to law to advance their causes, and processes of globalization have had profound effects on legal norms and practices. Law and Society in Latin America: A New Map offers the first systematic assessment by leading Latin American socio-legal scholars of the momentous transformations in the region. Through an interdisciplinary and comparative lens, contributors analyze the central advances and dilemmas of contemporary Latin American law. Among them are pioneering jurisprudence and legal mobilization for the fulfillment of socioeconomic rights in a highly unequal region, the rise of multicultural constitutionalism and legal struggles around identity politics, the globalization of legal education and practice, tensions between developmental policies and environmental justice, and the emergence of a regional human rights system. These and other processes have not only radically altered the institutional landscape of the region, but also produced academic and practical innovations that are of global interest and defy conventional accounts of Latin American law inherited from law-and-development studies. Painting a portrait of the new Latin American legal thought for an international audience, Law and Society in Latin America: A New Map will be of particular interest to students of comparative law, legal mobilization, and Latin American politics.

Challenges the distorted hegemonic accounts of Latin American law and reveals their geopolitical and economic consequences in the world today.