Cultures of Legality

Javier A. Couso is a Professor of Law at Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago, Chile. In 2006–7, Couso was the Tinker Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His work focuses on the study of Chilean and Latin American constitutional law and processes of judicialization of politics in the region. He has published extensively on such matters, in journals such as Democratization; Verfassung und Recht in Übersee (VRÜ) (Law and Politics in Africa, Asia and Latin America); Griffith Law Review; and the Revista de Ciencia Política. He has also contributed chapters in a number of edited volumes. Alexandra Huneeus is Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she is also a faculty member of the Legal Studies Program. Huneeus has been a postdoctoral Fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford University; a Visiting Scholar at Universidad Diego Portales, Chile; and a Fellow of the International Human Rights Clinic at the Berkeley Law School. Her research focuses on judicial politics and human rights in Latin America. Rachel Sieder is research professor at the Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social (CIESAS), Mexico City. She is also an associate researcher at the Chr.Michelsen Institute, University of Bergen, Norway. She was a Senior Lecturer in Politics at the Institute for the Study of the Americas, University of London, where she remains a research Fellow. She has published widely on indigenous rights, human rights, and socio-legal studies, with a particular geographical focus on Guatemala.

• Part I. Introduction: 1. Cultures of legality: judicialization and political activism in contemporary Latin America Alexandra Huneeus, Javier Couso and Rachel Sieder; Part II. Courts and Judicialization through a Cultural Lens: 2. Legal language and social change during Colombia's economic crisis Pablo Rueda; 3. How courts work: culture, institutions, and the Brazilian supreme tribunal federal Diana Kapiszewski; 4. More power, more rights? The Supreme Court and society in Mexico Karina Ansolabehere; 5. High courts and the inter-American court: judicialization, human rights and a tenuous relationship Alexandra Huneeus; Part III. Judicialization beyond the Courts: 6. The transformation of constitutional discourse and the judicialization of politics in Latin America Javier Couso; 7. Legal cultures in the (un)rule of law: indigenous rights and juridification in post-conflict Guatemala Rachel Sieder; 8. Political activism and the practice of law in Venezuela Manuel A. Gomez; 9. The Mapuche people's battle for land: litigation as a strategy to defend indigenous land rights Anne Skjævestad; 10. Judicialization in Argentina: legal culture, or opportunities and support structures? Catalina Smulovitz; 11. Novel appropriations of the law in the pursuit of political and social change in Latin America Pilar Domingo.