Visions of Latin American democratization assume that independent courts play crucial roles in providing a rule of law for politics, government, and economic relations in a liberal state. This project conducts exploratory research into the roles of courts in Latin American nations that are continuing their efforts to democratize, often under turbulent political and economic conditions that challenge understandings that courts in democratic societies will have institutional autonomy and be staffed by independent and impartial judges.
There has been real growth in the scholarly literature by social scientists on courts and judges in Latin America's wealthiest, most populous, and most studied nations, To complement this research, this project focuses on other nations that are of interest as contrasts to the more-studied group and on their own. It pays special attention to Ecuador and Uruguay, as representatives of very different patterns of national and judicial politics. As research access and data availability allow, the project also focuses on court roles in other less-studied nations. To guide the research, the P.I. will organize (using non-NSF resources) a conference of scholars responsible for the most important recent research on Latin American judiciaries.
In Ecuador and Uruguay, the project generates data from personal interviews with political and legal elites, researches documentary sources, gathers systematic data on judicial selection, recruitment and careers, and creates a decisions database from the case records of the supreme courts.
The project will enrich the descriptive foundation and the basis for more sophisticated theorizing about courts and judges and the interaction between turbulent politics, judicial institutions, and the rule of law. The research supports training two junior scientists, who will join the ranks of well-qualified investigators of Latin American judicial politics. It creates a database on the courts of Ecuador and Uruguay to enrich the resources available to the sociolegal community.
