Law and Society in Latin America


Book Description

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.




Geopolitics and Decolonization


Book Description

Gathering researchers from or towards Global South epistemologies, this book enriches the debate on crucial questions for liberation in the South and the improvement of South relations. It argues that coloniality and colonialism are not outdated phenomena of the historical past, but contemporary marks that remain repressed. The dominance of Eurocentric paradigm in the social sciences explains the long-lasting detachment between thinkers and politicians from the Global South, which have been historically presented according to their respective relations with the West (Europe and North America). The dialogue on common problems and challenges to people and societies in the South, largely derived from their colonial past and condition, is still sparing. This book actively promotes and demonstrates the value of intercultural dialogue and debate amongst voices from within the Global South on issues to do with decoloniality, cultural rights, law and politics.




Everlasting Countdowns


Book Description

Politics, not demographics, is at the core of this book on censuses. The contributors to this volume once and for all remove the fig-leaves from census-making by historicising and contextualising a type of statistical practice that has become essential for the functioning (and understanding) of the contemporary state. The book includes superb cross-disciplinary studies on ethnic and racial census categorisation in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala, Panama, Peru and Venezuela (as well as two chapters that explicitly develop a comparative perspective). Against conventional wisdom, it provides conclusive evidence and new arguments for those who contend that in the practice of counting social identities there is no such thing as an exact or naturally objective method. These studies make clear that ethnic and racial categories in censuses are defined, used or obliterated in accordance with malleable conceptions of nationality, democracy and justice that depend on hegemonic ideologies and the goals that states set for themselves at particular historical periods. Given the prominence and the double-edged potential of the political articulation of identity categories, this book constitutes an indispensable source of information and insightful discussion for anyone interested in contemporary Latin American politics, and will undoubtedly raise the existing degree of public awareness, scrutiny and discussion around national population counts.




Handbook on Legal Cultures


Book Description

Cooperation across borders requires both knowledge of and understanding of different cultures. This is especially true when it comes to the law. This handbook is the first to comprehensively present selected legal cultures based on a very specific set of structural elements which can be found in all such cultures. Legal cultures are a product of and impacted by certain fundamental and commonly shared ideas on and expectations of the law. In all modern societies these ideas are to a certain degree institutionalized or at least embedded in institutionalized practices. These practices determine the way lawyers are educated and apply the law, how they engage with the ongoing internationalization of law and what kind of values they adhere to. Looking at these elements separately enables the reader to identify similarities and differences and to explain them contextually. Understanding these general features of legal cultures can help avoid misunderstandings or misinterpretations of foreign law and its application. Accordingly, this handbook is a necessary starting point for all kinds of legal comparative studies conducted by academics, students, judges and other legal practitioners.




The Rights of Indigenous Peoples in Marine Areas


Book Description

The question of what rights might be afforded to Indigenous peoples has preoccupied the municipal legal systems of settler states since the earliest colonial encounters. As a result of sustained institutional initiatives, many national legal regimes and the international legal order accept that Indigenous peoples possess an extensive array of legal rights. However, despite this development, claims advanced by Indigenous peoples relating to rights to marine spaces have been largely opposed. This book offers the first sustained study of these rights and their reception within modern legal systems. Taking a three-part approach, it looks firstly at the international aspects of Indigenous entitlements in marine spaces. It then goes on to explore specific country examples, before looking at some interdisciplinary themes of crucial importance to the question of the recognition of the rights of Indigenous peoples in marine settings. Drawing on the expertise of leading scholars, this is a rigorous and long-overdue exploration of a significant gap in the literature.




The Oxford Handbook of Constitutional Law in Latin America


Book Description

Constitutional law in Latin America embodies a mosaic of national histories, political experiments, and institutional transitions. No matter how distinctive these histories and transitions might be, there are still commonalities that transcend the mere geographical contiguity of these countries. This Handbook depicts the constitutional landscape of Latin America by shedding light on its most important differences and affinities, qualities and drawbacks, and by assessing its overall standing in the global enterprise of democratic constitutionalism. It engages with substantive and methodological conundrums of comparative constitutional law in the region, drawing meaningful comparisons between constitutional traditions. The volume is divided into two main parts. Part I focuses on exploring the constitutions for seventeen jurisdictions, offering a comprehensive country-by-country critique of the historical foundations, institutional architecture, and rights-based substantive identity of each constitution. Part II presents comparative analyses on the most controversial constitutional topics of the region, exploring central concepts in institutions and rights. The Oxford Handbook of Constitutional Law in Latin America is an essential resource for scholars and students of comparative constitutional law, and Latin American politics and history Written by leading experts, it comprehensively examines constitutions, controversies, institutions, and constitutional rights in Latin America.




The Fight Against Poverty and the Right to Development


Book Description

This book conducts a comparative legal study from two analytical points of view. First, it accounts for the legal dimensions of the fight against poverty and the right to development as seen from the perspective of domestic legal law. It examines the domestic legal tools, such as constitutional law, that aim to contribute to the fight against poverty and the right to development. Second, the book accounts for the domestic contributions to the international legal framework and examines cross-cutting themes of the contemporary state-of-play on the fight against poverty more broadly and of the right to development. The book consists of several national and thematic reports, which look at these issues from either a national or a thematic perspective. Its first chapter is a general report, which draws on the national and thematic reports to compare, systematize and question the contemporary features at play within the field of the fight against poverty and the right to development.




Latin American Constitutionalism,1810-2010


Book Description

Latin America possesses an enormously rich constitutional history, one that has only recently become the subject of scholarly inquiry. As noted legal theorist Roberto Gargarella contends, contemporary constitutional and political theory has a great deal to learn from this history, as Latin American constitutionalism has endured unique challenges that have not appeared in other regions. Such challenges include the emergence of egalitarian constitutions in inegalitarian contexts; deliberation over the value of "importing" foreign legal instruments; a long-standing exercise of socio-economic rights; issues of multiculturalism and indigenous rights; and substantial experience with "unbalanced" versions of the system of "checks and balances." Moreover, Latin American nations have endured numerous and frequent constitutional changes over the past two centuries. In this landmark book, Gargarella provides a broadly comparative history of Latin American constitutionalism, informed by constitutional theory. He organizes the book across four major historical periods of Latin American legal history, infusing this history with a discussion of the ideas of thinkers including Juan Bautista Alberdi, Francisco Bilbao, Simón Bolívar; Juan Egaña, José González Vigil, Victorino Lastarria, Juan Carlos Mariátegui, Juan Montalvo, José María Mora, Mariano Otero, Manuel Murillo Toro, José María Samper and Domingo Sarmiento. Written by one of the leading scholars in the field, this book is truly a milestone in the study of Latin American constitutionalism.




Human Rights Encounter Legal Pluralism


Book Description

This collection of essays interrogates how human rights law and practice acquire meaning in relation to legal pluralism, ie, the co-existence of more than one regulatory order in a same social field. As a social phenomenon, legal pluralism exists in all societies. As a legal construction, it is characteristic of particular regions, such as post-colonial contexts. Drawing on experiences from Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa and Europe, the contributions in this volume analyse how different configurations of legal pluralism interplay with the legal and the social life of human rights. At the same time, they enquire into how human rights law and practice influence interactions that are subject to regulation by more than one normative regime. Aware of numerous misunderstandings and of the mutual suspicion that tends to exist between human rights scholars and anthropologists, the volume includes contributions from experts in both disciplines and intends to build bridges between normative and empirical theory.




Unsettling Eurocentrism in the Westernized University


Book Description

The westernized university is a site where the production of knowledge is embedded in Eurocentric epistemologies that are posited as objective, disembodied and universal and in which non-Eurocentric knowledges, such as black and indigenous ones, are largely marginalized or dismissed. Consequently, it is an institution that produces racism, sexism and epistemic violence. While this is increasingly being challenged by student activists and some faculty, the westernized university continues to engage in diversity and internationalization initiatives that reproduce structural disadvantages and to work within neoliberal agendas that are incompatible with decolonization. This book draws on decolonial theory to explore the ways in which Eurocentrism in the westernized university is both reproduced and unsettled. It outlines some of the challenges that accompany the decolonization of teaching, learning, research and policy, as well as providing examples of successful decolonial moments and processes. It draws on examples from universities in Europe, New Zealand and the Americas. This book represents a highly timely contribution from both early career and established thinkers in the field. Its themes will be of interest to student activists and to academics and scholars who are seeking to decolonize their research and teaching. It constitutes a decolonizing intervention into the crisis in which the westernized university finds itself.