Politics and Law in Latin America: New Questions, Old Challenges

The study of the relationship between politics and law in Latin America has been a fertile field in recent years. Although the region has a long tradition of approaching the study of courts, law and the judicial system from a legal and sociological perspective, it is only recently that political science has also shown interest in these issues. This responds to the national political dynamics of the region: until the 1990s, the vast majority of Latin American countries were characterized by judicial systems that lacked independence and were functional extensions of the executive. In recent decades, many of these judicial systems have been transformed into political arenas of paramount importance. Increasingly, Latin American citizens see law and their judicial systems as spaces in which to discuss and elaborate public policy, as well as to debate the scope and content of human, socioeconomic, political and civil rights. The current centrality of law and the courts for national political dynamics in Latin America is one of the most important political changes at the regional level after the third wave of democratization (Sieder, Schjolden, and Angell 2005; Couso, Huneeus, and Sieder 2010), which has generated not only great interest among political scientists in these issues, but has opened the field of study to new and promising horizons of analysis (Helmke and Rios-Figueroa 2011).

Politics and law; Latin America; Judicialization of politics; Sociology of law

Un evento científico en formato seminario internacional
Envío de las ponencias en formato volumen editado para consideración de la editorial.
Sentar las bases para una red académica sobre estudio interdisciplinar de la judicialización de la política en América Latina.