Legal Reform: Some Emerging Paradoxes of Latin America’s Legal and Judicial Reform Movement

Abstract

Among the several factors cited by observers as affecting Latin America’s global competitiveness, the legal and judicial system is increasingly being given a prominent place. Concerned critics argue that outdated laws, flawed judiciaries, and their combined impacts on juridical and citizen security, as well as on political and policy stability, raise the costs of economic transactions, constrain credit availability, and discourage long-term investment. Building on the work of neoinstitutional economics as developed by Douglass North (1990) and others, researchers have attempted to quantify the relationship between a “well-functioning” legal and judicial system and economic growth (Kaufman et al., 1999 and 2002) and to calculate the impact of improvements in the former on national growth rates (Sherwood et al., 1994; Castelar Pinheiro, 2003). Meanwhile, a variety of cross-national surveys (summarized in CEJA, 2003 and 2005) reveal entrepreneurs’ belief that the region’s legal systems pose several impediments to their own actions.KeywordsLatin American CountryJudicial SystemAlternative Dispute ResolutionSupreme CourtLegal EmpowermentThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.