Shifting Legal Visions
Judicial Change and Human Rights Trials in Latin America

An in-depth study of processes of judicial transformation that enabled the success of human rights trials in Latin America.

Ezequiel A. González-Ocantos (Author)

9781316508800, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 23 November 2017

341 pages, 14 b/w illus. 9 tables
23 x 15.2 x 1.8 cm, 0.5 kg

'… a fascinating comparative study of how Latin American judicial systems have reacted to the efforts of activists to pursue 'strategic litigation' to bring to account those guilty of human-rights abuses. The author focuses on the role of 'legal preferences'. … With a sophisticated comparative research design and impressive documentary and interview-based evidence, the study accounts for variation across and within the cases of Argentina, Mexico, and Peru. The author emphasizes the diffusion of technical know-how and socialization to change norms and identifies in support of rights-based jurisprudence. At the same time, he recognizes the process as a fundamentally political one. Technical expertise about legal remedies from international law can prove inadequate in the face of intransigent judges supporting the old order, and politicians must be pressured to replace them. Identifying the conditions under which 'replacement' supplements 'persuasion' is one of many contributions of this fine book.' Matthew Evangelista, Cornell University, New York

What explains the success of criminal prosecutions against former Latin American officials accused of human rights violations? Why did some judiciaries evolve from unresponsive bureaucracies into protectors of victim rights? Using a theory of judicial action inspired by sociological institutionalism, this book argues that this was the result of deep transformations in the legal preferences of judges and prosecutors. Judicial actors discarded long-standing positivist legal criteria, historically protective of conservative interests, and embraced doctrines grounded in international human rights law, which made possible innovative readings of constitutions and criminal codes. Litigants were responsible for this shift in legal visions by activating informal mechanisms of ideational change and providing the skills necessary to deal with complex and unusual cases. Through an in-depth exploration of the interactions between judges, prosecutors and human rights lawyers in three countries, the book asks how changing ideas about the law and standards of adjudication condition the exercise of judicial power.

1. From unresponsive to responsive judiciaries
2. Legal preferences and strategic litigation: a theory of judicial change
3. Argentina: pedagogical interventions and replacement strategies in the struggle for human rights
4. Peru: pedagogical interventions and human rights trials in unfriendly territory
5. Mexico: an untamed judiciary and the failure of criminal prosecutions
6. Comparative perspectives on the problem of legal preferences.

Subject Areas: International human rights law [LBBR], Public international law [LBB], International law [LB], Law [L]