Routledge Handbook of Law and Society in Latin America

Rachel Sieder is senior research professor at the Center for Research and Graduate Studies in Social Anthropology (CIESAS) in Mexico City. She is also associate senior researcher at the Chr. Michelsen Institute in Bergen, Norway. Her research interests include human rights, indigenous rights, social movements, indigenous law, legal anthropology, the state and violence. Her books include: ed. Demanding Justice and Security: Indigenous Women and Legal Pluralities in Latin America. (2017); ed. with John-Andrew McNeish, Gender Justice and Legal Pluralities: Latin American and African Perspectives, Routledge-Cavendish (2012); ed. with Javier Couso and Alexandra Huneeus, Cultures of Legality: Judicialization and Political Activism in Latin America, (2010). She has an M.A. in Latin American Studies and a Ph.D. in Politics from the University of London.Karina Ansolabehere is a full-time researcher at the Institute of Legal Research of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and part time researcher at FLACSO-Mexico. She is a sociologist from the University of Buenos Aires, has a Masters in Economic Sociology from the University of General San Martin, and a Ph.D. in Research in Social Sciences with specialization in Political Sciences from FLACSO-Mexico. Her topics of interest are judicial politics, human rights, judicialization of human rights, legal cultures and political theory, with special focus on Latin America. She has taught courses on sociology of law, judicial politics, human rights and political theory. She is a member of the National Researchers System of Mexico. Ansalobehere has a degree in sociology from the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and a Ph.D. in Social Sciences with specialization in Political Sciences from FLACSO-Mexico.Tatiana Alfonso is an assistant professor at Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico (ITAM) Law School in Mexico City since 2017. Her research interests include human rights, sociology of law, sociology of race and ethnicity, sociology of development and methodologies for legal research. In her work, she explores the relation between law and social inequalities with a focus on how legal and political institutions may have distributive effects between unequal actors in society. In pursuing those interests, she has carried out research on racial discrimination and human rights, social movements and legal change, and property rights of indigenous peoples and Afrodescendant communities in Latin America. She is a psychologist and a lawyer from Universidad de Los Andes (Bogotá, Colombia) and holds a Masters and a PhD in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

"Sieder, Ansolabehere and Alfonso Sierra have assembled a stellar cast of experts on the interaction between law, politics and society in Latin America. I am not aware of any other handbook that is as inter-disciplinary as this one, or that covers such a broad range of issues as insightfully and effectively. The volume not only canvasses the literature on old and established topics, providing readers with an excellent overview of the evolution of socio-legal scholarship against the backdrop of political, social and legal change in Latin America, but also includes a wonderful fourth section with essays that identify incipient bodies of research on new and exciting topics. Graduate students and academics will find in this volume a rich source of information about the state of the discipline, and most importantly, a source of inspiration for future projects." — Ezequiel Gonzalez-Ocantos, University of Oxford. Author of Shifting Legal Visions: Judicial Change and Human Rights Trials in Latin America"This volume constitutes a landmark contribution to the scholarship on law and society in Latin America, and more broadly. It distinctively captures a breadth of analytical, disciplinary and thematic perspectives on the role of law and norm development in political, social and economic life in the region that is unique and highly valuable. In doing so it engages with the wider complexities of how formal and informal rules, norms and law are contested, negotiated and how legal institutions are invoked in pursuit of different objectives of justice and legal change. It constitutes a major contribution to the scholarship of law, politics and society in Latin America and elsewhere." — Pilar Domingo, Overseas Development Institute

• 1. Law and Society in Latin America: An Introduction Part 1: Law, Politics and Society 2. Latin America’s contribution to Constitutionalism 3. State and Law in Latin America: A Critical Assessment 4. Legal Pluralism and Fragmented Sovereignties: Legality and Illegality in Latin America 5. Disobeying the Law: Latin America’s Culture of Noncompliance with Rules 6. Law and Violence in Latin America 7. Ethnography, Bureaucracy and Legal Knowledge in Latin American State Institutions: Law’s Material and Technical Dimensions 8. Latin American Feminist Legal theory: Taking Multiple Subordinations Seriously 9. Law and Race in Latin America 10. An Agenda for Latin American "Law and Development" 11. Marxist Perspectives on Law and Inequality in Latin America Part 2: New Constitutional Models and Institutional Design 12. Judicial Politics in Latin America 13. Supreme and Constitutional Courts: Directions in Constitutional Justice 14. Public Prosecutors Offices in Latin America 15. Human Rights Ombudsmen in Latin America 16. Prisoner Capture: Welfare, Lawfare and Warfare in Latin America’s Overcrowded Prisons 17. Challenges of Police Reform in Latin America 18. Legal Professionals in Latin America at the Dawn of the 21st Century 19. Legal Institutions as Arenas for Promoting Human Rights 20. Deglobalization and Regional Human Rights Part 3: Law and Social Movements 21. The Judicialization of Politics in Latin America 22. Society, the State, and Recognition of the Right to a Self-Perceived Gender Identity 23. Law, Gender and Social Movements in Latin America: Moral Negotiations and Uneven Victories in Feminist Legal Mobilization 24. Transitional Justice and the Politics of Prosecuting Gross Human Rights Violations in Latin America Part 4: Emergent Topics 25. Urban Regulation and the Latin American City 26. Landscapes of Property: Socio-Legal Perspectives from Latin America 27. New Influences on Legality and Justice in Latin America: Corruption and Organized Crime 28. The ‘New Militarism" and the Rule of Law in Latin American Democracies 29. Drugs and the Law in Latin America: The Legal, Institutional and Social Costs of Drug Policy