Law and the New Developmental State: The Brazilian Experience in Latin American Context.

Helena Alviar García, David Trubek, Diogo Coutinho

This book explores the emergence of a new developmental state in Latin America and its significance for law and development theory. In Brazil since 2000, emerging forms of state activism, including a new industrial policy and a robust social policy, differ from both classic developmental state and neoliberal approaches. They favor a strong state and a strong market, employ public-private partnerships, seek to reduce inequality, and embrace the global economy. Case studies of state activism and law in Brazil show new roles emerging for legal institutions. They describe how the national development bank uses law in innovation promotion, trade law strengthens new developmental policies in export promotion and public health, and social law frames innovative poverty-relief programs that reduce inequality and stimulate demand. Contrasting Brazilian experience with Colombia and Mexico, the book underscores the unique features of Brazil's trajectory and the importance of this experience for understanding the role of law in development today.

The Legal Architecture of Populism: Exploring Antagonists in Venezuela and Colombia

Helena Alviar García, Gerald L. Neuman
| Cambridge University Press

This chapter examines populism in Latin America as a method of exercising power, rather than a specific set of substantive provisions. It explores the commonalities between left-populism and right-populism as illustrated by two ideologically opposing figures, Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and Álvaro Uribe in Colombia. Despite their contrasting social and economic policies, there were more similarities than differences in the legal architecture they deployed. In both cases, the preferred tools included the resort to referenda to circumvent and control the legislature, delegitimation of the opposition, and activation of mechanisms allowing the executive to legislate by decree. Their methods illustrate how populist leaders use tools to produce arguments of legitimacy for their selection of winners and losers in society.

The Distributive Politics of Impunity and Anti-Impunity: Lesssons from Four Decades of Colombian Peace Negotiations

Helena Alviar García, Karen Engle
| Cambridge University Press

Commentary, Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey

Macarena Sáez

The Court and the Women: Structural Litigation and Grassroots Organizing for Internally Displaced People’s Rights in Colombia

Julieta Lemaitre Ripoll, Kristin Bergtora Sandvik
2016 | Cambridge University Press

Reproductive Rights Litigation: From Recognition to Transformation

Luisa Cabal, Suzannah Phillips
2017 | Cambridge University Press

Between constitutional jurisdiction and women¿s rights organizations: women, war and the space of justice in Colombia

Carolina Vergel Tovar
2012

On April 14, 2008, the Colombian Constitutional Court produced a decision that seems amazing given the local context: Auto [Statement] 092/2008 (Statement) for the protection of internally displaced women (IDW). After 248 pages, the Constitutional Court declared that the disproportional effect of forced displacement on women’s lives was a fact, meaning that the overwhelming majority of victims of displacement are statistically female. The court established two “constitutional presumptions” to make the procedural evaluation of the effects of this kind of crime easier. The court also ordered the government to create thirteen special programs to assist IDW as well as to undertake specific measures of protection that are considered, through this same statement, a response to 600 complaints. The surprising novelty of this decision goes beyond its extension and the statistics analyzed by the court. This statement is not a typical decision, what is known in Colombia as an “acción de tutela.” The process begins, formally speaking, with an examination of facts, which could be a violation or a serious menace to civil rights (an effective damage is not necessary; just a threat justifies the use of the action) and finishes with a decision to stop the menace and restore the right issued from this examination. Statement 092 also develops a thorough study on the impact of the war on the life of Colombian women, in particular the problems related to forced displacement and sexual assault.

An outsider's comment on Eve Darian-Smith's Laws and Societies in Global Contexts: Reviews on Eve Darian-Smith, Laws and Societies in Global Contexts: Contemporary Approaches (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013)

Isabel Cristina Jaramillo Sierra

Mexico. Mexico’s Supreme Court and International Law: Caught Between parochialism and cosmopolitanism

Francisca Pou Giménez, Alejandro Rodiles
2019 | Cambridge University Press

México

Francisca Pou Giménez
2019 | Cambridge University Press

It is a settled rule of international law that a State may not rely on the provisions of its 'internal law' as justification for failing to comply with international obligations. However, the judiciaries of most countries, including those with a high record of compliance with international norms, have increasingly felt the need to preserve the area of fundamental principles, where the State's inclination to retain full sovereignty seems to act as an unbreakable 'counter-limit' to the limitations deriving from international law. This volume explores this trend by adopting a comparative perspective, addressing the question of how conflicts between international law and national fundamental principles are dealt with and resolved within a specific legal system. The contributing authors identify common tendencies and fundamental differences in the approaches and evaluate the implications of this practice for the future of the principle of supremacy of international law.

Changing the Channel: Broadcasting Deliberations in the Mexican Supreme Court

Francisca Pou Giménez
2017 | Cambridge University Press

A key intermediary between courts and the public are the journalists who monitor the actions of justices and report their decisions, pronouncements, and proclivities. Justices and Journalists: The Global Perspective is the first volume of its kind - a comparative analysis of the relationship between supreme courts and the press who cover them. Understanding this relationship is critical in a digital media age when government transparency is increasingly demanded by the public and judicial actions are the subject of press and public scrutiny. Richard Davis and David Taras take a comparative look at how justices in countries around the world relate to the media, the interactive points between the courts and the press, the roles of television and the digital media, and the future of the relationship.

Book Review: Law as a Means to an End: Threat to the Rule of Law By Brian Z. Tamanaha. New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. 268pp.

María Carolina Olarte Olarte
2008

Commentary on DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services

Macarena Sáez

This book provides new, feminist perspectives on famous family law cases that span generations. The chapters take court decisions and rewrite them with feminist ideas in mind. Each rewritten opinion is penned by a leading scholar who relied only on materials available at the time of the original decision. The decisions address topics such as the criminalization of polygamy, intimate partner violence as a ground for asylum, the legality of gestational surrogacy, the rights of cohabitants, discrimination against transgender parents, immigration rules governing non-citizen parents, and child welfare and child support systems, among others. Each opinion is accompanied by a commentary that explains the original opinion as well as its contemporary relevance, and each commentary also is authored by a respected scholar. The combination of a rewritten opinion and its commentary provides an in-depth examination of the most important topics in family law.