The Latin American Casebook

Traditionally relegated because of political pressure and public expectations, courts in Latin America are increasingly asserting a stronger role in public and political discussions. This casebook takes account of this phenomenon, by offering a rigorous and up-to-date discussion of constitutional adjudication in Latin America in recent decades. Bringing to the forefront the development of constitutional law by Latin American courts in various subject matters, the volume aims to highlight a host of creative arguments and solutions that judges in the region have offered. The authors review and discuss innovative case law in light of the countries’ social, political and legal context. Each chapter is devoted to a discussion of a particular area of judicial review, from freedom of expression to social and economic rights, from the internalization of human rights law to judicial checks on the economy, from gender and reproductive rights to transitional justice. The book thus provides a very useful tool to scholars, students and litigants alike.

"This casebook...compares the law of Latin America to that of Europe, as well as the United States while introducing students to the richness and diversity of the Latin American legal tradition through cases, legal documents, and commentaries. This...book allows students to see the law in action and guides them through entire judicial decisions, demonstrating how litigation unfolds and how a different legal culture operates. It is currently the only cases and materials publication devoted to Latin American law and the issues that arise in concrete litigation south of the border."--

Traditionally relegated because of political pressure and public expectations, courts in Latin America are increasingly asserting a stronger role in public and political discussions. This casebook takes account of this phenomenon, by offering a rigorous and up-to-date discussion of constitutional adjudication in Latin America in recent decades. Bringing to the forefront the development of constitutional law by Latin American courts in various subject matters, the volume aims to highlight a host of creative arguments and solutions that judges in the region have offered. The authors review and discuss innovative case law in light of the countries’ social, political and legal context. Each chapter is devoted to a discussion of a particular area of judicial review, from freedom of expression to social and economic rights, from the internalization of human rights law to judicial checks on the economy, from gender and reproductive rights to transitional justice. The book thus provides a very useful tool to scholars, students and litigants alike.

Textbook on law and jurisprudence in Latin America, including an interdisciplinary research analysis of the legal aspects of economic development - covers land reform, commercial law responses to inflation, the role of the courts, etc., includes a case study of legal institutional frameworks in the caracas urban area slums in Venezuela, and provides historical background. References.

Private law touches every aspect of people's daily lives—landholding, inheritance, private property, marriage and family relations, contracts, employment, and business dealings—and the court records and legal documents produced under private law are a rich source of information for anyone researching social, political, economic, or environmental history. But to utilize these records fully, researchers need a fundamental understanding of how private law and legal institutions functioned in the place and time period under study. This book offers the first comprehensive introduction in either English or Spanish to private law in Spanish Latin America from the colonial period to the present. M. C. Mirow organizes the book into three substantial sections that describe private law and legal institutions in the colonial period, the independence era and nineteenth century, and the twentieth century. Each section begins with an introduction to the nature and function of private law during the period and discusses such topics as legal education and lawyers, legal sources, courts, land, inheritance, commercial law, family law, and personal status. Each section also presents themes of special interest during its respective time period, including slavery, Indian status, codification, land reform, and development and globalization.

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.

The first casebook of its kind, Latinos and the Law: Cases and Materials addresses a rich array of topics that are relevant to the largest and most diverse ethnic minority group in the United States. Ranging from the legal and social construction of race, ethnicity, and gender, to language, education, immigration, stereotyping, workplace discrimination, and rebellious lawyering, the new edition highlights the Spanish colonization of Latin America to provide further context for the subsequent colonial treatment of its people and leaders by the United States. Beginning with sociolegal histories of the main Latino/a subgroups, early sections of the book contextualize the Latino/a condition within the United States' historical conquest of and hegemony over Latin American peoples, as well as their centurial immigration to the United States. Updated materials on immigration include recent border-control initiatives and rhetoric, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), and the controversial separation of asylum-seeking families from Central America. New materials on the workplace feature attacks on unionization, struggles over the minimum wage and fair pay, and one-sided abuse of H-2 visas. The book also contains new coverage of racial insults, stereotypes, popular culture, and inter-group tensions, including an emerging theory of multi-group oppression. Throughout, Latinos and the Law utilizes theoretical approaches that have proven highly useful in understanding Latinos, such as the white-over-black (or black-white) binary of race in the United States, similar concepts of critical race theory and "LatCrit" theory, and the internal colony model of postcolonial theory. With a wide selection of cases, statutes, documents, notes, questions, and bibliographic references, Latinos and the Law updates a vital resource for scholars, teachers, and students interested in understanding the largest and most diverse ethnic minority group in the United States.