Agents of neoliberalism? High Courts, Legal preferences and Rights in Latin America

Constitutional courts, like in de pen dent central banks, were seen by the in-ternational financial institutions and aid agencies fueling judicial reform in Latin Amer i ca in the late 1980s and early 1990s as crucial to neoliberal eco-nomic development. Safe from the vicissitudes of representative democracy by virtue of their design, high courts were deemed ideally located to pro-vide much-needed guarantees of legal predictability. Strengthening courts and the judicial system in general was seen as vital to promoting legal sta-bility, providing access to justice for investors, increasing effectiveness, and safeguarding the neoliberal model (Carothers 2001; Rodríguez Garavito 2011). In this context, wide-ranging reforms often provided for the cre-ation of constitutional tribunals where none existed or for the empowerment of those already existing.Some of these new or recen