This book examines the effect of social inequality, political influence, and institutional design on the effectiveness of legal systems in Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay. It demonstrates the inequality existent in these systems, as well as the occasional successes. Its focus is on the criminal prosecution of violent police officers, but it draws implications for democracy, the rule of law, court functioning, and police violence. The book describes judicial, prosecutorial, and police structures and operation, as well as the nature of and response to lethal police violence in each location.

This book is a first-of-its-kind, five-country empirical study of the causes and consequences of social and economic rights litigation. Detailed studies of Brazil, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, and South Africa present systematic and nuanced accounts of court activity on social and economic rights in each country. The book develops new methodologies for analyzing the sources of and variation in social and economic rights litigation, explains why actors are now turning to the courts to enforce social and economic rights, measures the aggregate impact of litigation in each country, and assesses...

This book examines the effect of social inequality, political influence, and institutional design on the effectiveness of legal systems in Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay. It demonstrates the inequality existent in these systems, as well as the occasional successes. Its focus is on the criminal prosecution of violent police officers, but it draws implications for democracy, the rule of law, court functioning, and police violence. The book describes judicial, prosecutorial, and police structures and operation, as well as the nature of and response to lethal police violence in each location.

Analyzes the political roots of the systems of constitutional justice in Latin America, tracing their development over the last 40 years.