Prosecutorial Accountability and Victims' Rights in Latin America
Prosecutorial Accountability and Victims' Rights in Latin America

Author: Verónica Michel

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2018-01-18

Total Pages: 247

ISBN-13: 1108390137

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The responsibility of any state is to protect its citizens. But if a state, either through omission or commission, fails to investigate and prosecute crime then what remedies do citizens have? Verónica Michel investigates procedural rights in Chile, Guatemala, and Mexico that allow citizens to call for the appointment of a private prosecutor to initiate criminal investigations. This right diminishes the monopoly of the state over criminal prosecutions and thus offers citizens a way of insisting on state accountability. This book provides the first full-length empirical study of how the victims' right to private prosecution can impact access to justice in Latin America, and shows how institutional and legal arrangements interact to shape the politics of criminal justice. By examining homicide cases in detail, Michel highlights how everyday legal struggles can help build the rule of law from below.

Complementarity, Catalysts, Compliance
Complementarity, Catalysts, Compliance

Author: Christian M. De Vos

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2020-04-23

Total Pages: 389

ISBN-13: 1316996972

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Since its establishment at the turn of the century, a central preoccupation of the International Criminal Court (ICC) has been to catalyse the pursuit of criminal accountability at the domestic level. Drawing on ten years of research, this book theorizes the ICC's principle of complementarity as a transnational site and adaptive strategy for realizing an array of ambitious governance goals. Through a grounded, inter-disciplinary approach, it illustrates how complementarity came to be framed as a 'catalyst for compliance' and its unexpected effects on the legal frameworks and institutions of three different ICC 'situation countries' in Africa: Uganda, Kenya, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Linking complementarity's law and practice to contemporary debates in international law and relations, the book unsettles international law's dominant progressive narrative. It urges a critical rethinking of the ICC's politics and a reorientation towards international criminal justice as a project of global legal pluralism.

Institutions of Human Rights
Institutions of Human Rights

Author: Gordon DiGiacomo

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 2019-01-01

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 1487593244

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Written from a global perspective, The Institutions of Human Rights examines international human rights institutions and procedures, as well as weighty issues such as the protection of refugee and labor laws. Closely examining international human rights organizations, including the International Labour Organization, the International Criminal Court, and the European Court of Human Rights, this text places a particular focus on how institutions function, arguing that to truly understand human rights affairs one must also understand the politics and motivations at the core of these institutions. Each chapter includes key learning objectives and take-away messages and concludes with discussion questions to promote critical thinking and engagement.

The Limits of Judicialization
The Limits of Judicialization

Author: Sandra Botero

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2022-08-25

Total Pages: 363

ISBN-13: 1009103415

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Latin America was one of the earliest and most enthusiastic adopters of what has come to be known as the judicialization of politics - the use of law and legal institutions as tools of social contestation to curb the abuse of power in government, resolve policy disputes, and enforce and expand civil, political, and socio-economic rights. Almost forty years into this experiment, The Limits of Judicialization brings together a cross-disciplinary group of scholars to assess the role that law and courts play in Latin American politics. Featuring studies of hot-button topics including abortion, state violence, judicial corruption, and corruption prosecutions, this volume argues that the institutional and cultural changes that empowered courts, what the editors call the 'judicialization superstructure,' often fall short of the promise of greater accountability and rights protection. Illustrative and expansive, this volume offers a truly interdisciplinary analysis of the limits of judicialized politics.

Transitional Justice and Corporate Accountability from Below
Transitional Justice and Corporate Accountability from Below

Author: Leigh A. Payne

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2020-04-30

Total Pages: 395

ISBN-13: 1108640753

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Bruno Tesch was tried and executed for his company's Zyklon B gas used in Nazi Germany's extermination camps. This book examines this trial and the more than 300 other economic actors who faced prosecution for the Holocaust's crimes against humanity. It further tracks and analyses similar transitional justice mechanisms for holding economic actors accountable for human rights violations in dictatorships and armed conflict: international, foreign, and domestic trials and truth commissions from the 1970s to the present in every region of the world. This book probes what these accountability efforts are, why they take place, and when, where, and how they unfold. Analysis of the authors' original database leads them to conclude that 'corporate accountability from below' is underway, particularly in Latin America. A kind of Archimedes' lever places the right tools in weak local actors' hands to lift weighty international human rights claims, overcoming the near absence of international pressure and the powerful veto power of business.

Studies in Law, Politics, and Society
Studies in Law, Politics, and Society

Author: Austin Sarat

Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing

Published: 2020-05-04

Total Pages: 202

ISBN-13: 1839822805

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This volume of Studies in Law, Politics and Society brings together an international and interdisciplinary array of scholars to explore issues on the cutting edge of socio-legal research.

The Condor Trials
The Condor Trials

Author: Francesca Lessa

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2022-01-01

Total Pages: 392

ISBN-13: 0300254091

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Stories of transnational terror and justice illuminate the past and present of South America's struggles for human rights "Outstanding. . . . An Olympian view of the Condor system."--Philip Chrimes, International Affairs Through the voices of survivors and witnesses, human rights activists, judicial actors, journalists, and historians, Francesca Lessa unravels the secrets of transnational repression masterminded by South American dictators between 1969 and 1981. Under Operation Condor, their violent and oppressive regimes kidnapped, tortured, and murdered hundreds of exiles, or forcibly returned them to the countries from which they had fled. South America became a zone of terror for those who were targeted, and of impunity for those who perpetuated the violence. Lessa shows how networks of justice seekers gradually materialized and effectively transcended national borders to achieve justice for the victims of these horrors. Based on extensive fieldwork, archival research, trial ethnography, and over one hundred interviews, The Condor Trials explores South America's past and present and sheds light on ongoing struggles for justice as its societies come to terms with the unparalleled atrocities of their not-so-distant pasts.

Routledge Handbook of Law and Society in Latin America
Routledge Handbook of Law and Society in Latin America

Author: Rachel Sieder

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-05-20

Total Pages: 978

ISBN-13: 1317291271

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An understanding of law and its efficacy in Latin America demands concepts distinct from the hegemonic notions of "rule of law" which have dominated debates on law, politics and society, and that recognize the diversity of situations and contexts characterizing the region. The Routledge Handbook of Law and Society in Latin America presents cutting-edge analysis of the central theoretical and applied areas of enquiry in socio-legal studies in the region by leading figures in the study of law and society from Latin America, North America and Europe. Contributors argue that scholarship about Latin America has made vital contributions to longstanding and emerging theoretical and methodological debates on the relationship between law and society. Key topics examined include: The gap between law-on-the-books and law in action The implications of legal pluralism and legal globalization The legacies of experiences of transitional justice Emerging forms of socio-legal and political mobilization Debates concerning the relationship between the legal and the illegal. The Routledge Handbook of Law and Society in Latin America sets out new research agendas for cross-disciplinary socio-legal studies and will be of interest to those studying law, sociology of law, comparative Latin American politics, legal anthropology and development studies.

Victims Before the International Criminal Court
Victims Before the International Criminal Court

Author: Christoph Safferling

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2021-09-16

Total Pages: 390

ISBN-13: 3030801772

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The book analyses the difficulties the International Criminal Court faces with the definition of those persons who are eligible for participating in the proceedings. Establishing justice for victims is one of the most important aims of the court. It therefore created a unique system of victim participation. Since its first trial the court struggles to live up to the expectancies its statute has generated. The book offers a new approach of how to define victimhood by looking at the different international crimes. It seeks to offer guidance for the right to participate in the different stages of the proceedings by looking at the practice in national jurisdictions. Lastly the book offers insights into the functioning of the reparation regime at the ICC by virtue of the Trust Fund for Victim and its different mandates. The critical analysis of the ICC-practice with regard to definition, participation and reparation aims at promoting a realistic approach, which will avoid the disappointing of expectations and thus help to enhance the acceptance of the ICC.