Envisioning Reform : : Conceptual and Practical Obstacles to Improving Judicial Performance in Latin America / / Linn Hammergren.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Penn State University Press Complete eBook-Package Pre-2014
• VerfasserIn: Hammergren, Linn,
• Place / Publishing House: University Park, PA : : Penn State University Press, , [2021]; ©2007
• Year of Publication: 2021
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (360 p.)

Judicial 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.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- Introduction: Twenty Years of Reforms and Not a Consensus in Sight -- Part I: Five approaches to judicial reform -- 1 Criminal Justice Reform: Human Rights, Crime Control, and Other Unlikely Bedfellows -- 2 Judicial Modernization: Increasing the Efficiency and Efficacy of Court Actions -- 3 Developing a Professional, Institutionally Independent Judiciary -- 4 Access to Justice: Legal Assistance, Special Courts, Alternative Dispute Resolution, and Beyond -- 5 Strengthening the Judiciary's Role as a Check on Other Branches of Government -- Part II: Problems and remedies -- 6 Judicial Reform as a Problem of Focus: Why the Parts Don't Add Up to a Coherent Whole -- 7 Improving the Knowledge Base for Judicial Reform Programs -- 8 Toward a New Strategic Model -- 9 A Political Agenda for Reforming the Reforms -- References -- Index